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THE FATHER 
OF 
THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Nihil @Obstat - 
Fr. Franciscus D. McSuHane, O.P., S.T.Lz. 
Fr. Enyuarpus C. Daty, O.P., S.T.Lnz. 


Imprimatur : 
Fr. Raymunpbus Meacuer, O.P., S.T.Lr. 
Prior Provincialis. 
Imprimatur : 
Ré™vs MicHaet J. CuRLEY, 
Archiepiscopus Baltimorensis, 
Baltimorae, die Aprilis 11, 1926. 


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FATHER OF THE CHURC 
IN TENNESSEE 


OR THE LIFE, TIMES, AND CHARACTER OF 


THE RIGHT REVEREND 


RICHARD PIUS MILES, O. P. 


THE FIRST BISHOP OF NASHVILLE 


By 
|/ THE VERY REVEREND 
V. F. ODANIEL, O.P., 8S.T.M., Litt.D. 


THE DOMINICANA 
487 MicHI1GAN AvENUE, N. E. 
WaASHINGTON, D. C. 


For sale by 


FREDERICK PUSTET CO. (Inc.) 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
52 BARCLAY STREET 436 MAIN STREET 


Baus Deo Patri, et HFiliv 


et Spiritut Sancto 


PRESS OF 
SAINT Mary’s INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL 
1926 


TO THE MEMORY OF THE 
FOUNDERS OF SAINT JOSEPH’S PROVINCE 
OF FRIARS PREACHER 
BISHOP MILES COMPANIONS IN STUDY 
AND 
THE EARLY PRIESTS OF OHIO, KENTUCKY, AND 
TEN NESSEE 
BOTH SECULAR AND REGULAR 

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 








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CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
E ORE WORT ME. saat irate Ae ree eee reales xi 
BInTHPeLACH ANDILAREN TAGE sitieireet.cicse ls eed eenans 1 
Kentucky anp His BovHoop THERB.............0..00sc00es 23 
CFOESETO AMAIN TIGECOSE: Sestecce case eh ore entrant. 51 
Dons THE HasirT oF SAINT DOMINIC............cecceeee sees 75 
Re.icious Proression, STUDENT, PROFESSOR............ 91 
END OF STUDENT Days, ORDINATION.......ccccscceesscoeees 121 
HART YUL RIESTHOOD ote eerie reece sce ed 141 
Last Years UNDER FATHER WILSON........0...ceeeecceeeee 163 
Four Years UNDER FATHER TUITE... ..cccccccsseccceeees 187 
INETSSIONAR VAIN # GELIO see fe cartes seu cee rere ret ne eae 211 
PRIOR SE ROVIN OLAL DISH OP ste saa secs aes eee 23} 
HPA Fe Vee LEE NT ARES ET eee, seach ce teaak Gy hee oe eh ran eer We 263 
First CaTHoLic CHURCH IN TENNESSEB........c0sccceeee 294 
PAK ES UP OSSESSION | OF SHEL IS BOER. .c2:0. 8s hs sporeacccthacesh eae 315 
JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR..........00008 341 
RIGHT ERMOUTL OOR 7. ttre belt pions ines cautael eee 371 
TEOSSESGAND.« GAINS ec i oieieie hese des ener Ue sss heel ctau a ahaa neh d 393 
PROGRESSIO LOWS LDU LT Oo TEAD acc iit attr ecco sues 419 
TEATRO RUE CHROWICE oor eacete cet test cere ree oe tae herein aen tetese 444s 
RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES........ccsccsscsccecceecenscesees ATT 
WARIOUS APOSTOLIC, IL FFORTSsscsyis2stesvectscetbrcitroaisecsess 508 
THe CrRowNING oF A WELL-SPENT LIFBE..........00..0000 522 
PLPREN TD IRVRED CE tate ceca cte teats Pheer dat Mca oe eteeD ras Snead Weare 560 
PACE BIEN DUS WL eee ane ORE he LE LE. cu val ah ny 575 
BIBTIOGR ARE VER cere elke sc eens cucalesicemecciehecesfioveb es 576 
LD XU en Ne tes rete nv attnae venture 583 


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Paar 
toe ignitelcy sr iGhArd nr wyilles, O), Pita, .detvtsieccsese sss Frontispiece 
PGmIgitarey werd ward > WemwiCks Oy, be occenccct pesccceregh este ses 83 
Saint Rose’s Priory and Saint Thomas’ College..................., ae 
MceVeTVORcy -oAllucl: LeaWilson, .b., sabe cdercesohencr est 185 
Poe sC eV Lilcs me AU ALN. Ue uy ae. Meets eleetcac cad iesoteerctersale fender Eoneer tl ces 261 
AvemeLL ey mio LO eti My Lem LALIT hss. oesnscse sh sttre net nat oereaekek are eee ants 314 
Pac me IUCVaMm CODE Tiam mht DELL tuncsussccc;cttcty ates cuebcse-hevtsetalerstaeeees 314 
em y MECMISI Ame OULD ev esscvenssreetescveast sh staccstsa tye neaerereredsa. 314 
ame UPR OUTED LIME AD TILE ess sts secrers cys osredecceties sess tasot eter ences 314 
Bishop Miles at the time of his Consecration.....................0+ 326 
PatucopArrellee NASHVILLE SaHirst AAT BOY sssete.ccsegsscdh tessseeesedet ste: 326 
Ploterosary GaAtnedrals NASD VILE). 7... pcedeenscsaspst ies -sesstnnneatonca ts 326 
Teme CV PeMeVLICNACLE IVE CALCOT ese) sc teecicet heres case tocse in ve vaph anette decoys 390 
eeBIUCY i) dines Wi Ely LAT KSON EOL tesccestteecengerscare decisions finn tyes 390 
hem birst: CatholicnGnurch ati M empiissy...tsysessey-sesscesersedsecs ste 390 
A eMIE Vem LV ORS COACH Laat sie tetcsicr ycuubsthatee ter sree gauveatese dee neae vce 4.02 
SPL GY OMeYV ILI AIUMaEL OWE Crtins sassohvivauxes ss acsesas tesgiesseesnentovetetaboterits 402 
Immaculate Conception Church, Clarksville... eeeeees 402 
(ihesoeven, Dolors\ Cathedral, Nashville...ci tis. aiid ecsccescnee 426 
RE MmLveY in) OSC DILG Sa, a DSICTOANIS a idcstseokaansessigsteflnvgiie toes teeecs Sa cote ee 473 
CiemivcyreNiIcnOlasi itv ONO, P io... 0c ec Wivscetie sexsgsubsaccedy sn A738 
iiiaciiiatce conception Church, | Knoxville: scvssatiscssites cee setses see 473 
Seite y LOUD eV ned ACK UCL its ceets tie ractcastserconcsy ester cces (asuaels dontiversacs 499 
Beemer ee LeCTIVY BV INCE DESO LOW Tic iceciatactcs tues tesco cveve-rracoss teed cea 499 ° 
Saints Peter and Paul’s Church, Chattanooga..................008 499 
item ueveen) ONMmrts LEAT VEO), Deas tans. ce ascnasedrttibestneetiverdeceapests cases 505 
Rem LU even) OUIIEA MUD OKELIRO) Li. terccas, tracceeashttet tyes secs cassicceececacsaies 505 
Weer ittcuietitS te CA CHOC? I CCLOLVs..tevssscarcceeiitessecetaceseistrtaeeses senna te 505 
ieav ervettevesamuciiilin Montgomery, O:PoV.G.2...7,.:.0.0- 515 
Maem eens AMeS UN suCT ETO, CO). Lists. c sdvates acts csasshssanpnasnessdetantauts ccs 515 
aie ise WemerOUne tiem layTiClign Oc ks sarsskek costes cis iedceareees te edie vencdtsAtss aes nese 515 


ix 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Paas 
LEV ir) SNUATIUS | SVLTeo LL) ATCOsm Clee cctei spss cstraes tence tense meee 515 
New poaintar éter sy Conech. geen pills, accra. ese 534 
Bev anthony ei erane ois (), eceae eee eee: Seen a eee 548 
Reve anes ey Gaal vie G); er ereneues tae tracy eevee ever tete eee een 548 
Rtey arte DMeT ews V files lobar aqiien iy vii e seer ae eine et eee 548 
TGV ie OL Teli N CALISe 2 OC). Diiveceme ciara harcate ean aey eee 548 
Most= Rey, Joseph: se Alemany,. OQ. P22 tivecce. eceses eee 559 
Woosterewn | homas ie GracesOi eee we eee 559 
Hight) Rev eRichard Poo Miles, 4O7P ise ree ecterneee 559 


Richt sRev.. 4) ames Whelan. @i Paneer eee 559 


FOREWORD. 


Only a specialist can fully realize the toil, research, 
and patience involved in an effort to write a thorough 
and accurate work in so untouched a field as that with 
which, the present volume deals. Yet, it does not seem 
too much for belief, a casual glance at a few of its 
chapters, its voluminous footnotes, and its bibhography 
will give even a careless reader some idea of the endless 
labor, time, delving, and study, as well as the painstak- 
ing care, devoted to its execution. ‘The difficulty of the 
task was rendered all the greater by numberless errors 
discovered in the few meager accounts written at an 
earlier date, and the fact that much of our information 
on the Church in Tennessee, Bishop Miles, and his early 
entourage is largely derived from tradition. 

Serious students, we venture to be assured, can hardly 
fail to note the faithful, constant effort to make the 
biography of the Father of the Church in Tennessee 
complete and reliable in every detail. No stone was 
left unturned in order to place the narrative on a bed- 
rock foundation, drawing the life-story of the Friar- 
Preacher prelate, in so far as might be, from only first- 
hand sources. ‘The footnotes and quotations, let us 
hope, will bring the conviction that in but few instances 
did these researches fall short of their purpose. Sim- 
ilarly, ever and always, were the venerable traditions, 
whilst accorded the highest regard, thoroughly sifted 
and examined in the light of every available document. 
This, too, may be seen in many parts of the book. 


X1 


xii FOREWORD 


Nothing was taken for granted. Even graveyards 
were visited in the hope that the tombstones might 
yield, as they sometimes did, desired dates and data. 

Because of Bishop Miles’ early, long, and fruitful 
associations with Saint Joseph’s Province of Friars 
Preacher and the Church of Ohio, no less than that 
of Kentucky, the story of his life is inseparable 
from these institutions. In like manner, his birth in 
Maryland, together with his honorable ancestry there 
and the part which that colony played in the youthful 
Catholicity of the United States, seemed to call for an 
outline of the history of Lord Baltimore’s former pa- 
latinate as a proper historical setting for the volume. 
To all these subjects the same careful research was given 
as to the life of the bishop himself and to the history 
of the Church in Tennessee. 

Doubtless general readers will constitute the greater 
number of those into whose hands the book will fall. 
For this reason, our constant effort was to write the 
text in a popular style, but without departing from the 
historical method. Few works of its kind are so pro- 
fusely illustrated. Indeed, no effort was spared to pro- 
cure pictures of the churches and priests of Tennessee 
in Bishop Miles’ time. The copious footnotes and 
references are principally intended for the student and 
historian, that they may see at a glance the sources 
from which the story is drawn. 

Sometimes, though happily not often, what we 
candidly believed to be the best interest of historic truth 
obliged us to take friendly issue with previous writers, 
and even to indulge in a little criticism of those who 
were unfair to the subject of our narrative and his co- 
laborers. However, few are the historians who are not 


FOREWORD Xili 


obliged to confront some such unpleasant experiences. 
In all these instances we have sought to lay the plain 
facts before the reader, and to give due credit to the 
other side, if there was another side, that thus neither 
truth nor charity should be infringed. For the same 
purpose, the documents and their interpretation were 
always submitted to others that, if needs there should 
be, we might correct our views, as well as otherwise 
better the book by the judgment of different minds. 

This scrupulous care not to deviate from historic 
truth or the square deal emboldens us to hope that the 
volume will receive from the public and reviewers a rec- 
ognition like unto the generous measure of praise which 
was accorded its predecessors in the same field. It will 
offer the historian a fund of information on our Amer- 
ican Church which has never appeared in print before. 
The charm of Bishop Miles’ character, we doubt not, 
will combine with his deeply religious nature, spirit of 
self-sacrifice, untiring zeal, and ceaseless labors in the 
cause of religion to arouse the interest of readers in 
his life-story, no less than to win their hearts, give them 
great edification, and prove a source of good for their 
souls. 

Perhaps a Catholic writer in the United States could 
not, at this time, better employ his pen than in rescuing 
our early heroes and heroines of the faith from the 
oblivion with which not a few of them are threatened. 
Their memories should be preserved and treasured, as 
well for the sake of religion as for the inspiration of 
future generations; and the only way of effecting this 
is by the written story of their lives. Gratitude de- 
mands that much of us. Despite his long, faithful, 
and fruitful toils for God and for souls, outside his own 


xiv FOREWORD 


diocese and the order to which he belonged, 'Tennessee’s 
great first bishop was all but forgotten in a country 
where his name should be a symbol of love, a token of 
honor, and a pledge of fidelity. If this volume but 
save for him the place which he deserves in our eccle- 
siastical annals, the labor of writing it will not have 
been expended in vain. Besides, as in the State, so 
in the Church her history is largely what it has been 
made by her noble men and women. Without them 
the narrative of her centuries would be dull beyond 
expression. 

We take advantage of this foreword to express our 
gratitude to all those who have, in various ways, aided 
with the book. Perhaps special mention is due to the 
Rev. Lucian C. Mercier, of the Third Order of Saint 
Dominic, who has labored for many years in the ar- 
chives of Europe, both large and small. During the 
past decade and more, he has discovered, copied, and 
sent to us many documents that were invaluable for 
our work. When this biography was commenced, he 
sought to obtain permission to continue the researches 
which we had made in the Propaganda Archives down 
to 1830 (the term set for us by the sacred congregation) , 
in order to give it the benefit of the bishop’s letters to 
Rome and other documents relating to the Diocese of 
Nashville; but the cardinal prefect did not feel disposed 
to set aside the rule which closes the archives to investi- 
gation after that date. However, Father Mercier 
secured copies of a few such documents which were of 
service in the cause. 


Victor F. O’Daniet, O.P. 


THE DomMINICAN House or STUDIES, 
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, 
WasHINcToNn, D.C., May 5, 1926. 


The Father of the Church in Tennessee 


CHAPTER I 
BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 


Tue Colony of Maryland must ever occupy a con- 
spicuous place in the history of the Catholic Church 
and the Order of Saint Dominic in the United States. 
Its beginnings form one of the brightest chapters in 
our national annals. It was in the former Baltimore 
Palatinate that the Church first took root in English- 
speaking America. There also were born the saintly 
founder of the Dominican Order in our great republic, 
the Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, and five 
out of the first six recruits to the province of Friars 
Preacher that he established. The colony was formed 
under Catholic auspices, and begun by contributions 
mainly from Catholic sources. So was it dominated 
by Catholic ideas, whilst its first settlers were largely 
if not principally Catholics.’ 

Perhaps none of the early English colonies were so 
elite in their personnel as was that of Lord Baltimore. 
Certainly none of them were founded on such broad 
principles of freedom and Christian charity. Mary- 

1 Whether Catholics or non-Catholics were the more numerous part 
of the original colonists in Maryland has been, and still is, a much 
debated question. Suffice it here to say that, in the opinion of the 


writer, those who hold that Catholics were in the majority for some 
years have the better part of the argument. 


Z ] 


2 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


land’s very corner-stone was liberty of conscience. She 
gave the modern world its first example of unrestricted 
religious toleration—a principle that afterwards happi- 
ly became a keystone in our American civilization. 
Others had dreamed of such a civic state; but Cecilius 
Calvert, the father and founder of Maryland, was the 
first to reduce it to practice either in the Old World or 
in the New. 

Another dominant idea that the second Lord Balti- 
more inherited from his father, George Calvert, was to 
make his American palatinate a refuge and a home for 
all who were persecuted for conscience’ sake.” The 
dream of his life, there seems no room for doubt, was to 
convert it into a land of sanctuary in which his fellow 
Catholics of England could find and enjoy the hap- 
piness of worshipping God in accordance with the dic- 
tates of their consciences in freedom and safety. Nat- 
urally he felt a special compassion for those of his own 
faith, because the hardships imposed on them in the 
home country were oppressive beyond measure. How- 
ever much we who have Anglo-Saxon blood in our veins 
may dislike to admit it, from the time of Henry VIII 
until well within the eighteenth century, with the ex- 
ception of the short reign of Queen Mary, the perse- 
cution of Catholics in England rendered the lives of 
those who remained true to the old faith in that once 
happy country not unlike the lives of the Christians in 
the early ages of the Church. 

2George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, had essayed to establish 
a similar colony in Newfoundland, which he called Avalon; but he 
failed in the attempt, largely on account of the cold climate. He then 
obtained a patent for one in Maryland. He died, however, before he 


could put his design into execution. His son Cecilius fell heir to his 
rights. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 3 


Baltimore was not only too broad of mind but also too 
good of heart to confine his philanthropic enterprise to 
those of his own creed. He knew well that the most 
relentless and unmerciful of all tyranny is that of relig- 
ious bigotry. He wished therefore to extend a protect- 
ing hand to any and every one who suffered under its 
oppression, irrespective of faith, race, or country. 
Doubtless he wished also to prove to the world that 
Catholics and Protestants could live together in peace, 
harmony, and happiness. The necessity of such an ac- 
cord for the success of his undertaking in the wilds of 
America is the keynote of the instructions that he gave 
his brother, Governor Leonard Calvert, for the manage- 
ment of the colony. 

As Bishop Russell correctly states: “It can now be 
asserted without question that to Maryland belongs 
the credit of having been the first government in the 
world in modern times to successfully establish religious 
freedom.” * Our unbiased non-Catholic historians give 
the same conclusion. Nor was the wisdom of the lord 
proprietary’s plan slow to manifest itself. Indeed, 
largely owing to it, the Maryland Palatinate enjoyed 
prosperity and happiness from the start, while hard- 
ships and distress were commonly the lot of the other 
English settlements in the present United States. 
George Bancroft but tells the plain truth when he says: 


No sufferings were endured; no fears of want were excited; 
the foundation of the colony of Maryland was peacefully and 
happily laid. Within six months, it had advanced more than 
Virginia had done in as many years. The proprietary continued 
with great liberality to provide everything that was necessary for 

3See The Calvert Papers: Number One (Fund-Publication, No. 28, 


pp. 127 ff). The first item in the instructions concerns this point. 
4 Maryland; The Land of Sanctuary, p. 276 


4 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


its comfort and protection, and spared no costs to promote its in- 
terests. ... But far more memorable was the character of the 
Maryland institutions. Every other country in the world had perse- 
cuting laws; through the benign administration of the government 
of that province, no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ 
was permitted to be molested on account of religion.” Under the 
munificence and superintending mildness of Baltimore, the dreary 
wilderness was soon quickened with the swarming life and activ- 
ity of prosperous settlements; the Roman Catholics who were op- 
pressed by the laws of England, were sure to find a peaceful asy- 
lum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake; and there, too, 
Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. . . .® 

The colonists enjoyed freedom of conscience, not less than 
freedom of person and estate, as amply as ever any people in any 
place of the world. The disfranchised friends of prelacy [ Epis- 
copalians| from Massachusetts, and the Puritans from Virginia, 
were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political rights 
in the Roman Catholic province of Maryland.’ 


William Hand Browne, discussing Calvert’s instruc- 
tions for the government of his palatinate, declares that 
“equal justice and Christian charity to both Catholic 
and Protestant was the keynote of his rule.”* In like 
manner, David Ramsay tells us: ‘““Mankind then beheld 
a new scene on the theatre of English America. They 
saw, in Massachusetts, the Puritans abridging the rights 


°*The words “no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ” refer 
to “An Act Concerning Religion” passed by the Maryland assembly of 
1649 (Maryland Archives, I, 244-247). The exclusion of tolerance from 
the Jew and unbeliever, as expressed in this clause, was not in accord- 
ance with the spirit and plan of Lord Baltimore. The “Act of 1649,” 
so highly praised by some writers as a legislation in favor of religious 
liberty, was in reality a notable narrowing of the broader tolerance that 
had prevailed in the colony until that time, and must evidently be 
attributed to the Puritan influence that had begun to make itself felt. 

6 History of the United States (twenty-fourth edition), I, 247-248, 

7 Ibid., p. 257. In the same place, speaking of the beginnings of Mary- 
land, Bancroft says: “Its history is the history of benevolence, gratitude, 
and toleration. Everything breathed peace but Clayborne.” 

8 George Calvert and Cecilius Calvert, Barons of Baltimore, p. 57. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 5 


of various sects; and the Church of England in Virgin- 
ia, actuated by the same spirit, harassing those who 
dissented from them in religion while the Roman Catho- 
les of Maryland tolerated and protected the professors 
of all denominations.” 

Hardly indeed had the Maryland pioneers begun to 
reap the fruit of their adventure when Baltimore invited 
the persecuted Puritans in Virginia and the more sorely 
tried Episcopalians in Massachusetts to his colony. 
Calvert, however, was in advance of his age. Perhaps 
the initial success of the palatinate gave him too im- 
plicit a trust in human nature. At any rate, in view 
of its results, this invitation seems an error, or at least 
premature. Until then, with the exception of the diffi- 
culty with William Claiborne and occasional threats 
from the Indians, which were perhaps inspired by that 
gentleman, there prevailed a happiness and harmony 
unusual in pioneer colonies. 

Trouble and even persecution all too quickly followed 
the advent of the newcomers from Virginia and Mass- 
achusetts. They soon forgot the charity, good-will, and 
hospitality that had been shown them. In their former 
homes they had been the persecuted; in their new abode, 
overlooking the gratitude they owed the founders of 
Maryland, they became persecutors, in accordance as 
they gained the ascendency—first the Puritans, and 
then the Episcopalians. Under the rule of both the 
Catholics bore the brunt of the intolerance. Their 
treatment forms an unpleasant subject to write about 
at this day. Yet it is well for us to dwell on it, for it 
shows the baneful effects of rampant religious prej- 
udice. 


9 History of the United States, I, 116. 


6 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The consequences of such a spirit may be seen in the 
insurrection incited by Richard Ingle in 1645; in the 
reduction of the province by Claiborne, Richard Bennet, 
and others in 1652: in the deposition of Governor Wil- 
liam Stone in 1654; in all the subsequent train of mis- 
chievous events that ended in the replacement of the 
liberal policy of the first Baltimores by one of a religious 
intolerance little less oppressive than that which had 
preceded it in the mother-country. In a word, one of 
the brightest chapters in our civic history was succeeded 
by another that brings a blush to every American of 
true blood. 

It required all the adroitness and ability of Cecilius 
Calvert, together with the power and influence of his 
friends in England, to prevent his charter from being 
annulled. Under his son and successor, Charles Cal- 
vert, it was actually vacated. Indeed, the Maryland 
assembly sought to have the third Lord Baltimore de- 
prived of even his proprietary rights. The mother- 
country, however, declined to sanction such a gross in- 
justice towards one whose father had done so much for 
the province. Benedict Calvert, the profligate son of 
Charles, apostatized from the faith for no other purpose 
than that of regaining the Maryland charter; but he 
survived his father only a few weeks. Charles Calvert 
II, son of Benedict, then became the fifth Lord Balti- 
more. He had followed his father in the change of re- 
ligion, and as a consequence the charter was restored 
to him in its original terms, with the hearty approbation 
of the Maryland assembly. It was a sad change both 
for the welfare of the colony and for the happiness of its 
people. 

In spite of the spirit of opposition that began to man- 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE é 


ifest itself soon after the advent of colonists from Vir- 
ginia and Massachusetts, and grew as their numbers 
increased, Maryland long enjoyed the reputation 
abroad of being a province with religious tolerance. In 
fact, it is not unlikely that many believed that those of 
the old faith still constituted the greater part of its 
population. For this reason, Catholic immigrants con- 
tinued to seek homes there. Ireland and Scotland con- 
tributed their quotas as well as England.” 

Doubtless among those who came to the colony under 
such an impression were some of the progenitors of the 
subject of this sketch. The exact date when the first 
Miles arrived perhaps could not now be determined. 
Still it is beyond question that they were in the palati- 
nate not many years after its foundation. Tamily tra- 
dition, which seems to be borne out by documents, tells 
us that Bishop Miles’ first American forbear was among 
the early Maryland colonists; that he was English; 
that he was a Catholic; and that he made his home in 
Saint Mary’s County. 

It is certain that settlers of this family name, though 
apparently not numerous, were widely scattered 
through Maryland. By 1725 we find them in Somerset, 
Dorchester, Talbot, Calvert, Kent, Anne Arundel, Bal- 
timore, Saint Mary’s, and Charles counties. The earli- 
est record in which we have discovered the name is that 
of the court of January, 1645, noting a credit of four 
hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco to Robert Miles 
which were received in 1643; but it does not state in 

10 No doubt the reason that Catholics did not come to Maryland in 
greater numbers than they actually did, after the first years of the 
establishment of the colony, was their opposition to taking the oath of 


allegiance and supremacy, which was required by law before they would 
be allowed to sail. 


8 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


what part of the colony he lived.“ The second is a de- 
mand of Nicholas Miles for a survey of land, in behalf 
of himself and his sons John and Peter, “‘on the condi- 
tions of the plantation.” This was in November, 1651, 
and indicates that they had been in the province for 
some years.” 

Circumstances, for he settled on Britton’s Bay, in 
Saint Mary’s County, family traditions, and the hand- 
ing down of the first name lead us to believe that this 
Nicholas Miles was the progenitor of Tennessee’s first 
bishop. Most lkely the John Miles who married 
Mary Beckwith, granddaughter of Nicholas Harvey, 
an intimate friend of Cecilius Calvert and a passenger 
on the Ark or the Dove, was the son in whose name 
the early colonist demanded a grant of land.” 

Several individuals by the name of Miles must have 
arrived in Maryland shortly after those just mentioned. 
John Miles of Dorchester County is the only one of 
these whose location is designated. Francis Miles, to- 
gether with his wife (Catherine) and their children 
James, John, Catherine, and Priscilla, was brought 
or sent over by “His Excellency Charles Calvert’ 
himself, the son of the palatinate’s founder and its sec- 
ond proprietary. They settled in Saint Mary’s County, 
where “Miles Meadow” was surveyed for them in 1664, 
which would indicate that they had come to America 
sometime before.“ 

11 Maryland Archives, IV, 296. We follow the new style of dating. 
Tobacco, it will be remembered, was then used as currency in Maryland. 

12 Karly Settlers, Liber A.B.H., p. 233 (Land Office, Annapolis). 

13 Early Settlers (Liber Q, p. 416) and Inventories and Accounts CEVS 
179) show this Miles-Beckwith marriage (Land Office, Annapolis). 

14 Karly Settlers, XVII, 531 (ibid.) ; Ricuarnson, Sidelights on Mary- 


land History, 1, 289. There are a number of errors in the present 
index to Early Settlers at Annapolis. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 9 


The records also show a Thomas Miles in the colony 
in 1657. ‘They do not tell where he lived; but in 1669 
we find a person of the same name in Anne Arundel 
County. One Tobias Miles of Calvert County was in- 
dicted by the provincial court of April, 1672, because 
his dog had bitten Sarah Carr the previous May;” 
whilst the earliest will we have found by one bearing 
this patronymic is that of a Tobias Miles, in Anne 
Arundel County. It is dated August 16, 1691, and was 
probated on March 16, 1692. He had a considerable 
landed estate. A part of it, called “Brantry” (that is, 
Bantry), was left to his younger son, then under eigh- 
teen years of age, who bore the same name as his fa- 
ther.” Again a “Tobias Miles, son of Tobias Miles,” 
is remembered in the will (probated on February 16, 
1666) of Nicholas Hammond of Calvert County.” If 
these people belonged to the same family, as they prob- 
ably did, it would seem from the names Carr and 
Bantry that they were of Irish origin, or had Irish con- 
nections. ‘Tobias would be a rather singular baptismal 
name for a Catholic, whilst there is something of a 
tradition to the effect that the Miles in Calvert and 
Anne Arundel counties were Quakers. 

A will of Henry Miles of Somerset County (dated 
March 18, 1696, and probated February 20, 1697,) 
shows that he was a fairly well-to-do planter. One 
William Miles, a sailor or ship carpenter living in Kent 
County in 1697, seems really to have belonged to Som- 

15 Maryland Archives, (in the order recorded above) X, 534; II, 228; 
XXXIX, 676. 
16 Batpwin, Maryland Calendar of Wills, IV, 236. 


Role 135. 
18 Jbid., II, 126. 


10 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


erset County.” Most likely he was a relation of Henry. 
We have discovered no suggestion regarding the reli- 
gion of these people. It is noteworthy, however, that 
there were then, as there are now, few Catholics in that 
part of Maryland. 

Miles River, in Talbot County, was known by that 
name before 1675. So do we find a noted plantation in 
the same county called “Miles End” prior to 1700. 
Doubtless they got their names from some early colon- 
ists of that patronymic who had attained no little in- 
fluence in the province. 

Saint Mary’s County, the first established in the col- 
ony, was always strongly Catholic, and the Miles there 
seem certainly to have been of the same faith as the 
greater number of their neighbors. Although they had 
evidently been in the county for many years, the earliest 
will we have found in its records by one of the name is 
that of John Miles. It bears the date of February 20, 
1697, and was probated on March 16, 1697. He left 
six children—J ames, John, Nicholas, Henry, Edward, 
and a daughter whose name is not given. James was 
the eldest, for he was bequeathed the “home plantation.” 
The remainder of the estate was equally divided among 
his four brothers and sister. The fact that ao mention 
is made of the wife in the will indicates that John Miles 
was a widower at the time of his death; while the ap- 
pointment of his son John as the guardian of some of 
his brothers and his sister until they should attain their 
majority shows that the children were still largely 
minors.” 

19 Maryland Archives, XXV;. 599; BALDWIN, op. cit., III, 172. 
20 BALDWIN, op. cit., II, 133. This John Miles seems to have been 


the son of the Nicholas Miles mentioned earlier. The father appears 
to have died intestate. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 11 


A. recurrence of the same first or Christian names 
in families of the same patronymic points clearly to a 
relationship, or common origin. It is one of the best 
helps to the genealogist. For this reason, though per- 
haps it could not now be proved, we are inclined to be- 
heve that this John Miles, to whose will we have just 
referred, was one of the early American progenitors 
of the Right Rev. Richard Pius Miles. ‘The names 
John, Nicholas, Henry, and Edward are frequently 
repeated among the bishop’s relatives. It is a family 
tradition that he was descended from the Miles of Saint 
Mary’s County. So is it on record that some of his 
kinsmen went from that locality to Kentucky. Indeed, 
some years ago there were a number of families of that 
name in central Kentucky who claimed relationship 
with him, and whose forbears were said to have gone 
west from the counties of Charles and Saint Mary’s. 

Next in chronological order comes the will of Francis 
Miles of Saint Mary’s County. It bears no date, but 
it was probated on September 23, 1700.7" He left two 
small plantations, known respectively as “Miles Mead- 
ow and “Back Acres’, to his grandson Francis, son 
of John Miles. In case of Francis’ death without issue, 
“Back Acres” were to go to Robert, son of John Wise- 
man; and “Miles Meadow” to Mary, daughter of John 
Miles; and should she die without issue, to John, son of 
John Miles. Catherine Wiseman, a daughter, was be- 
queathed personalty. 

The will of Susanna Miles of the same county is 
dated February 23, 1702, and was probated on June 
2, 1702. She left her plantation, known as “Halford’s 
Folly”, to her daughter Catherine, wife of Edward 


“1 [bid., II, 197. 


12 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Horne. Robert, son of John Wiseman, and Mary, 
daughter of John and Margery Miles, received some 
personalty. The two last legatees, it will be recalled, 
had benefitted by the testament of Francis Miles, a 
circumstance that suggests a relationship between him 
and the present testator, Susanna Miles. It is quite 
possible that she was his wife; that she was a widow 
when she married him; and that she had a daughter by 
her previous marriage, the Mrs. Catherine Horne to 
whom she gave her real estate.” 

These two last wills deserve to be considered in 
connection with another fact noticed at this time. From 
the days of the insurrection of John Coode, in 1689, and 
the appointment of Lionel Copley as governor by the 
English crown two years later, Catholics were debarred 
from holding public office. Yet we find a John Miles, 
almost certainly the son of the Francis Miles mentioned 
above, filling such a position in 1696. It is but natural 
to wonder if he did not sell his faith for worldly honor 
and profit, and if this were not the reason for which he 
was passed over in the wills of Francis and Susanna 
Miles, though his children were remembered in them. 
In all ages there have been those who forsook God for 
mammon.”* 

Be this as it may, the fidelity of the Miles of Saint 
Mary’s County to the faith, no less than their social 
standing may be seen from their intimate associations, 

22 Ibid., II, 239. These people seem evidently to have been the Miles 
brought or sent over by Charles Calvert I. It would appear that Francis 
Miles’ first wife died,and that he married again. 

23 Maryland Archives, XX, 540. However, in justice to John Miles, 
it should be noted that the test oath for office holders was introduced 


only in 1699. Thus he might have held the position of public trust 
without too much of a sacrifice of his religion. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 13 


as shown in the public records, with the best Catholic 
families in the colony. Such relations meant much at 
that day. From Saint Mary’s County descendants of 
the first settlers of the name gradually made their way 
northward into Charles County, and thence into wes- 
tern Prince George’s. In these two counties also they 
were not only held in high regard, but were counted 
as well among the truest members of the Church. 

As in the case of their namesakes mentioned earlier 
in the chapter, so in that of the Miles of southwestern 
Maryland there are reasons for believing that they had a 
Celtic strain in their blood; and that, though very likely 
of different creeds, these various families were close 
friends, if not even related. The Catholic Miles are 
mentioned more than once in connection with persons 
who were evidently Irish either by birth or by descent. 

In the Maryland militia during the Revolution we 
find a soldier with the significant name of “Murphey” 
(Murphy) Miles, but we do not know from what part 
of the colony he hailed.** Tobias Miles of Calvert 
County had a son and a grandson called John. Sev- 
eral of the Miles in Saint Mary’s and Charles coun- 
ties bore the same personal designation. Thomas is 
a name found in all these places; and Bishop Miles 
had a brother and a nephew so called. ‘There were at 
least three Henry Miles in Somerset County, which was 
quite a common name among the Miles of Charles and 
Saint Mary’s. So were there two landed estates known 
as “Miles End”—one in Talbot and the other in Charles 
County. 

Although they do not afford positive proof, these 
facts appear to be more than a case of mere coincidence. 


24 Maryland Archives, XVIII, 232. 


14 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


They seem clearly to point in the direction indicated. 
As in England, so perhaps in Maryland there were 
then few Catholic families without relations who did 
not belong to the faith. In Ireland also, than which 
no country in the world has suffered more in defense of 
its religion, homes were sometimes divided by lapses 
from the Church. A like division not infrequently oc- 
curred through the conversion of the invader from Eng- 
land. The original Miles, there can be no doubt, were 
of unmixed British blood; but it is a matter of history 
that more than one person of that name went over to 
the Emerald Isle, where they became the forefathers 
of some of the principal families in the land.” Thus 
possibly, through intermarriage or conversion, we have 
the explanation of the apparent difference of religion 
among the Miles in the Baltimore Palatinate and of 
their Irish connections. 

In Maryland, after the power of government was 
taken out of the hands of Catholics, there was tolerance 
for all except those who had founded the colony on a 
basis of religious toleration. 'They were disqualified 
from holding public office, deprived of the franchise, 
forbidden to erect churches, permitted to worship only 
under the roofs of their own homes, fettered by every 
kind of penalty. Jiven the right to have a private chap- 
el in or attached to one’s house came from the English 
parliament, which refused its consent to the more dras- 
tic legislation of the colonial assembly forbidding all 
Catholic worship.” Those were cruel days. May 
their like be never seen again. 


25 O’Hart, Irish Pedigrees, passim. 
26 Maryland Archives, XXVI, 340-341, and 431-432. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 15 


It was the misfortune of Maryland that she fell all 
too often into the hands of unscrupulous and predatory 
adventurers. Under their influence pernicious laws 
were enacted. Well-meaning Protestants opposed such 
legislation; but they could not stem the tide of prej- 
udice. The well-springs of public opinion had been 
too thoroughly poisoned by false, tireless, and not in- 
frequently malicious propaganda against Catholicity. 

Yet, under the guidance of their Jesuit missionaries, 
the Catholics of the colony, for the greater part, proved 
faithful to their religion. In spite of the ostracism, 
handicaps, and even hardships against which they had 
to contend, they increased in numbers. Their industry 
and intelligence, their respect for law, their honest 
dealing and blameless lives not only wrested admiration 
from even the enemy, but also made them perhaps the 
most highly regarded and influential element in the 
province. 

There is reason for believing that the ancestors of 
Bishop Miles and their connections contributed not a lit- 
tle towards the attainment of this good repute. No rec- 
ord has been discovered that would cast a shadow upon 
their fair name. They held no civic positions, it is true; 
neither could they under the law. However, the Miles 
of Maryland and their descendants seem to have had 
little desire for such honors, for it is seldom that we find 
one in public office, whether in their home land or in 
the place of their adoption. They rather ambitioned to 
do good and to serve in a private capacity, be it in the 
Church or in the State. This was an admirable trait 
of Nashville’s first bishop. Not many years ago one 
used frequently to hear it said of him that he made a 
splendid superior, that his confréres loved to serve under 


16 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


him, that he consistently sought to avoid dignities, and 
that he accepted authority only under obedience. 

The Catholic Church, whilst somewhat monarchical 
in form, is essentialiy democratic in spirit. She is adap- 
table to every kind of government, for she recognizes 
all legitimate authority as derived from God. It was 
her inborn spirit of democracy that made her adherents 
in the English colonies of America rally so nobly to the 
cause of liberty when the break came between them and 
the mother-country. Despite the intolerance and bur- 
densome laws to which they had long been subjected by 
their fellow citizens, the Catholics of Maryland forgot 
their grievances at the call of duty and patriotism. 
None flocked to the standard of freedom in proportion- 
ately greater numbers or proved themselves braver than 
they. ‘Their heroism, fortitude, and perseverance form 
a bright chapter in our history, both civic and eccle- 
siastical, 

Albeit a peace-loving people, the Miles were not 
among the slowest or least resolute to take up arms in 
defense of the rights of the province. There were not 
many of that patronymic in the former palatinate. Yet 
we discover a goodly number of the name engaged in 
the struggle for liberty. 

In the Maryland revolutionary muster-roll, for in- 
stance, we find mention of Kdward, Frederick, Henry, 
“Henry of Joseph”, Jacob, James, John, Joshua, 
“Murphey” (Murphy), Nicholas, Richard, Thomas, 
Walter, and William Miles.” The Christian or given 
name of Frederick appears three times; that of John, 
apparently a favorite in the family, eight times; Joshua 
four times; Walter three times; Nicholas, Richard 


27 Ibid., XVIII, passim. 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 17 


and William each twice. The name of Joshua is also 
given four times in the Journal and Correspondence of 
the Maryland Council of Safety, and thrice in the 
Journal and Correspondence of the Council of Mary- 
land; that of Henry in the latter document once; and 
that of Nicholas twice.” It goes without saying, of 
course, that the repetition of the first name does not 
always designate a different person. Yet when it oc- 
curs often, or in distinct records, we have an indication 
that it refers to more than one soldier. 

It should also be borne in mind, in the same connec- 
tion, that it is generally admitted that our revolutionary 
records are incomplete, and that they were imperfectly 
kept. Thus the above shows how nobly the Miles, in 
proportion to their numbers, rallied to the sacred cause 
of independence. As a rule, they enlisted early, and 
fought until victory crowned their efforts. One Joshua 
Miles of the “Western Shore” became a captain. Still 
another, it would seem, of the same name, who belonged 
to Harford County, attained the rank of first lieutenant. 
A Nicholas Miles, apparently of Charles County, 
served as second lieutenant; while one of the John Miles 

and Walter Miles were corporals. 

A different story is told of Robert Miles, a Batehen 
at Annapolis. In May, 1779, he was placed under 
arrest on the charge of having expressed sentiments 
“inimical to the cause of America.” However, he soon 
secured his release from prison under a bail of 

SMO t G7, 000, and X12 25,170, 

29 Tbid., XXI, 6, 7, 157, 327, 62, 414. The name “Levin Miles” also 
appears several times in these revolutionary records; but, as there were 
strong reasons for suspecting that it was an error, and that the real 


name of this man was Levin Mills, we did not give him in the list of 
Miles who served in the war. 


3 


18 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


three hundred pounds. His bondsmen were James 
Reid and Henry Sibel.» But whence came this Miles 
of apparent Tory inclination, or whether the charge 
against him were true, we did not discover. Anyway, 
accusations made at a time of such excitement should 
not be too readily accepted. We should be slow to 
impugn his honesty, even granted that the indictment 
was based on fact. There were many who were Tories 
by sincere conviction, for they sincerely questioned the 
wisdom of the Revolution, as well as doubted the possi- 
bility of its success. 

That the Miles failed to attain higher positions in 
the American forces may be attributed to various rea- 
sons. First, be it said to their credit, they were patriots, 
not men of ambition. ‘They enlisted in the cause on its 
own merits, not for personal gain. They sought not 
glory, but the autonomy of their country. So again 
it could hardly be expected that religious prejudices 
and intolerance would undergo so sudden and violent a 
change that the oppressed should receive equal promo- 
tion almost overnight. ‘Time was needed for such a 
modification of sentiment and righting of wrongs. As 
a matter of fact, the old-time bias still exists in parts 
of the country. 

Perhaps it could not now be shown that Nicholas 
Miles, father of the subject of this biography, bore 
arms in the American Revolution. The name appears 
in the Maryland records; but it seems always to reter 
to a soldier of Charles County, while the bishop’s father, 
at this juncture, lived in Prince George’s.” Even if 

30 Ibid, XXI, 401, 409, 423. 


31 Although it appears that there was a Nicholas Miles of military 
age in Charles County through the war, it is not improbable that the 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 19 


he did not actually engage in the conflict, one may rest 
assured that, like his fellow Catholics and connections, 
he was deeply in sympathy with the cause of indepen- 
dence, and that he contributed his quota towards its at- 
tainment by way of assisting his native colony to carry 
on the struggle. He was a man cf four or five and 
thirty years of age, and married, when the war began. 
It has been handed down to us that he was a husband 
with strong family affection. ‘Tradition has wreathed 
a halo around his brow as one of the brave men who 
helped to free his country from bondage. 

The scanty records point to Saint Mary’s or Charles 
County as the birthplace of Nicholas Miles; and the 
date of his birth, 1740 or 1741, suggests the first local- 
ity, for it would seem that branches of the family 
had begun to move northward only a short time before. 
Possibly he was brought up in Charles County. There 
are indications that he was married twice; but if this 
be true, nothing is known of his first wife. The maiden 
name of the second Mrs. Miles, however, was Miss Ann 
Blackloc. For the date of this marriage Father Mar- 
tin P. Spalding, O.P., gives July 23, 1771, which is 
apparently correct.” It proved a happy union. Nich- 
olas Miles himself was a splendid type of the southern 
father of Nashville’s ordinary lived there at its outbreak. So it is 
possible that it was he whose name is given in the records, that he 
signed from Charles County, and that his place of registry was not 
changed. After all, it is admitted that the revolutionary records are 
far from complete. 

382A photographic reproduction of the census of Prince George’s 
County, in 1776 (page 87 of Gaius M. Brumbaugh’s Maryland Records: 
Colonial, Revolutionary, and Church), gives Nicholas Miles’ age as 
thirty-five, and that of his wife Ann as twenty-eight, It also shows 
two children, a son aged ten years, and a daughter aged three. Seven 


years between children would have been remarkable at that day, unless 
some had died in the meantime. If the boy were a son of Ann 


20 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


gentleman in colonial days. Ann Blackloc’s character 
may be judged by the fact that she left in Kentucky 
a lasting reputation of a lady who possessed all the 
virtues that grace a Christian home. 

Just where the marriage occurred we could not as- 
certain; but we find the young couple settled in Prince 


Blackloc, she was eighteen years of age when he was born. She was 
forty-three when she gave birth to Bishop Miles. This would also 
be somewhat singular, if her first child were born when she was only 
eighteen. 

For these reasons, one is antecedently inclined to believe that Nich- 
olas Miles was married twice. If Father Spalding’s statement is correct, 
as it very likely is, the question is settled. Father Spalding was born 
at Bardstown, Kentucky, in the neighborhood of which, as will be seen 
later, Bishop Miles was brought up. About thirty-five years ago, while 
stationed at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, he began to collect data on the 
early fathers of the province, and took a particular interest in Bishop 
Miles. There were then a number of more or less near relations of 
the bishop still living around Bardstown. Doubtless it was from 
family records, or a family Bible, in the possession of some of these 
relatives that Father Spalding obtained his information. 

The Catholic church records of that period have all been destroyed 
by fires. The colonial law of Maryland, and even the early state law, 
did not require a marriage license from the civil government, provided 
the banns of the intended marriage were proclaimed in a place of 
worship. This may explain why a diligent search failed to discover any 
trace of that sort of the marriage between Nicholas Miles and Ann 
Blackloc. 

Blackloc seems to have been quite an uncommon name in Maryland, 
for we found it in only three instances. Thomas “Blacklock” was a 
witness to the will of Paul Busey of Prince George’s County in 1718. 
Nicholas “Blacklock” died in Charles County in 1799, leaving eight 
children, one of whom was named Nicholas and another Ann. Benjamin 
Caiwood was their guardian, and also, together with John Spalding, 
executor of the estate. Another Nicholas “Blacklock”, son of the 
former, died in the same county in 1818. These Blacklocs or Blacklocks 
of Charles County seem to have had connections in Virginia. Possibly, 
therefore, Ann Blackloc was a Virginian and a convert. 

We had much trouble in ascertaining the name of Bishop Miles’ 
mother. Several descendants of his sisters thought it was Blackloc. 
Finally Mrs. Florida Young of Bloomfield, Kentucky, a great-grand- 
niece, was discovered. Though a non-Catholic, she knew the family 
history well. Her grandfather, Thomas Blackloc Miles; a nephew of 


BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE 21 


George’s County in 1776.” There they were blessed 
with seven children, four girls and three boys, who 
attained mature ages. Of Miles’ early avocation we 
know only that records of the day call him a carpenter; 
which, at that epoch, often meant one whom we would 
now term a builder.** It must have been so in his case, 
for his occupation brought him a snug competency that 
combined with his sterling character to make him one 
of the influential men in the western’ part of Prince 
George’s County. 

Nicholas Miles, it seems, plied his business for six 
years or more after his marriage to Ann Blackloc. In 
1788, however, he purchased a farm of some three hun- 
dred and fifty acres from Thomas Young, possibly of 
the noted family stem of Catholic Youngs who owned 
immense tracts of land in southern Maryland.” The 
plantation bought by Miles appears to have lain not 
far below the District of Columbia, and in the vicinity 
of the Potomac River. The first census of the United 
States, got up in 1790 in order to determine how many 
members each of the thirteen original commonwealths 
might send to the national congress, gives him six chil- 
the bishop, was called Blackloc from the bishop’s mother. Similarly, 
she said, the bishop had a brother called Edward Blackloc Miles, the 
Blackloc being given him in honor of his mother. This Edward 
Blackloc Miles is buried at Bloomfield. In the records at Bardstown, 
the county seat, his name is generally given as Edward B. Miles; but 
two or three times it is given as Edward Blackloc Miles. Mrs. Young 
insisted that the name should be spelled “Blackloc;” and we have fol- 
lowed the old spelling out of reverence. 

33 BRUMBAUGH, Maryland Records: Colonial, Revolutionary and Church, 
D.'o7: 

34 Deed of Thomas Young to Nicholas Miles, Recorder’s Office, Marl- 
boro, Maryland, Liber H. H., No. J. pp. 249-251; and deed of Nicholas 
Miles to Joseph Messenger, Marlboro, Liber H. H., No. III. pp. 586-589. 


39 Deed of Thomas Young to Nicholas Miles as in the preceding note. 
The deed is dated January 4, 1788. 


22 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


dren (two sons and four daughters), and makes him 
the owner of eight colored slaves.*° 

The subject of our sketch had not yet come into the 
world; but he was born shortly afterwards, May 17, 
1791, being the last of the children.” At his baptism 
he received the Christian name of Richard. However, 
a few years after the future bishop’s birth, his father 
joined in the tide of emigration from Maryland to Ken- 
tucky, and took him to the new west. 


36 The First Census of the Untted States, 1790: Maryland, p. 96. 

37 Because of the destruction, by fires, of all records at the Maryland 
Catholic missions that go back to this time, the date of the bishop’s 
baptism or birth can not be found at any of these places. The above 
date of his birth, however, is that given in many brief accounts of his 
life. Father Martin P. Spalding, O.P., also has it in his notes, and 
it is probable that he got it from a family Bible. After the sixth 
provincial council of Baltimore, convened on May 9, 1846, the Catholic 
papers of the country gave an account of the event, together with the 
names of the bishops who attended it, and the places and dates of 
their births. Of Bishop Miles, for instance, the Catholic Advocate 
of May 23, 1846, says: “Right Rev. Richard Pius Miles, Bishop of Nash- 
ville, born in Maryland, 17th May, 1791.” The United States Catholic 
Magazine (Baltimore), for June, 1846, has the same. Undoubtedly this 
date is official, first-hand, and correct. 


CHAPTER IT 
KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 


TRIBULATIONS are often blessings in disguise sent by 
the Ruler of the universe for purposes little dreamed 
of at the time when they try the courage of souls. 
Such, there is every reason to believe, was the War of 
the American Revolution. The Church was then in 
evil plight throughout the English-speaking world. In 
England and Ireland, it is true, her condition had some- 
what bettered through a gradual abatement of relig- 
ious prejudices, the repeal of some of the penal stat- 
utes, and the suffering of others to remain in abeyance. 
Yet in both countries the lot of the Catholics was still 
hard almost beyond human endurance. In the Ameri- 
can colonies, with the exception of Pennsylvania, their 
trials rather increased than diminished. Indeed, at this 
period intolerance was even more rampant in them than 
in the mother-country. Is it not then probable that 
the Revolution was sent by an unseen power for the 
religious betterment and the happiness of the world? 

The literature of that day shows beyond peradven- 
ture of doubt that anti-Catholic bias had much more to 
do with the Revolution than our historians are gener- 
ally willing to admit. The Quebec Act, by which toler- 
ance was granted to Catholics in the former French pos- 
sessions, and the later decree of the British parliament 
that forbade the occupation of the Ohio Valley by the 
inhabitants of the original English settlements along the 

23 


24 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Atlantic seaboard, threw these colonies into a veritable 
furore. An anti-Catholic mania took possession of the 
popular mind, which played a large part in fanning 
into open rupture the resistance to the principle of 
taxation without representation.’ It is quite probable 
that, had there been no Quebec Act, the break between 
England and her American dependencies would have 
been long delayed. 

For this reason, a loyal citizen of the United States 
can hardly look upon the spirit of intolerance at that 
particular time otherwise than in the light of a godsend 
in disguise. By mere accident, of course, this animus 
brought blessings to both Church and State. It was 
slow to change—so slow indeed that it perhaps pre- 
vented a part at least of Canada from joining us in 
the struggle for independence. As a matter of fact, 
the ugly temper succumbed only under the combined 
force of dire necessity, the assistance given us by 
France, and the influence of such men as George Wash- 
ington. 

Incidentally the baneful effects of religious intoler- 
ance at this epoch taught England as well as the United 
States a useful and needed lesson. Doubtless it is to 
the experience gained through the American Revolution 
that is largely to be attributed the broader policy which 
has marked Great Britain’s government of her foreign 
possessions since that period. At home also, despite 
relentless opposition, the contest for Catholic emancipa- 
tion grew in volume and intensity until 1829, when it 
was finally crowned with victory. 

1 Throughout the length and breadth of the colonies the pulpits rang 
with the most virulent denunciations of the Quebec Act and the Catholic 


Church, while the country was flooded with pamphlets of the same char- 
acter. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 25 


The new American republic was quicker to act. In 
the earliest congress of the youthful state ten amend- 
ments were made to its lately adopted constitution, the 
first of which declares: “Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting 
the free exercise thereof.” This was in 1789. A little 
later (1791), through the ratification of the required 
two-thirds of the original thirteen states, the amend- 
ment became a part of the country’s fundamenal law. 
‘or more than a century and a quarter has the statute 
not only stood the test of time, but even helped to make 
our constitution a model for those of other countries. 
May it ever remain a primal keystone as well to adorn 
our social fabric as to bind the land together in a peace- 
ful, happy, united, and prosperous people. 

It was befitting that the subject of our narrative 
should have been born in the very year in which the 
principle of religious toleration was incorporated in the 
constitution. We should search in vain for a more kind- 
ly, charitable, and practical exponent of tolerance than 
was he in his daily life. ‘Thoroughly Catholic, he 
claimed that right for himself, and he readily extended 
it to others. It was in part this trait that enabled him 
to gain the hearty good-will of every community in 
which he lived. 

Meanwhile, now that the clouds of war had dispersed, 
the ways of peace had resumed their even tenor, no 
intolerant laws guided the selection of homes, and no 
parliamentary prohibition held the colonists back from 
the west, the call of the fertile lands beyond the 
Alleghany and Cumberland mountains became irre- 
sistible. The earliest large stream of immigration 


26 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


was into Kentucky.” Among the pioneer settlers were 
many Catholics, who felt that priests would soon fol- 
low in their wake, and that thus they could better 
their worldly fortunes without a sacrifice of their re- 
ligion. 

With its fascinating legends of the battlefields and 
hunting-grounds of the aboriginal American; the tradi- 
tions of its fearless explorer, Daniel Boone; the charac- 
ter of its bold, hardy pioneer hunters; and the spirit 
of its brave and picturesque backwoodsmen, the story 
of Kentucky never lacks interest. ‘The early annals 
of few of our states are so rich in a charm ever old, and 
yet always new. However, in a work like this we can 
do no more than give a brief outline of its early history, 
especially the Catholic part of it, as a background for 
the narrative. 

More than likely the first white men who set foot 
within the territory now comprised in that state were 
French. In 1673, Louis Joliet, accompanied by the 
noted Jesuit missionary, Father James Marquette, 
made his historic voyage of exploration down the Mis- 
sissipp1 River. By some they are thought to have land- 
ed at the juncture of the great “Father of Waters” and 
the Ohio, where they visited the wandering Shawnees. 
Others again think it probable that Robert de la Salle 
touched the western part of what is now Kentucky in 
1680 or 1681. Possibly, too, Father James Gravier, 
S. J., sojourned a while with the mild and peaceful 
Shawnees on a journey along the Mississippi in 1700.* 

2 The immigration into Tennessee was earlier than that into Kentucky, 
but it was not so great in volume. 
3 Wess, The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky, pp. 13-14; Co ins, 


History of Kentucky, I, 14-15. Shea (History of the Catholic Church in 
Colonial Days, pp. 314-315) does not think that Marquette landed at 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 27 


Be this as it may, from that time until fifty years later 
rarely, if ever, was the solemn silence of Kentucky’s 
primeval forests broken by the tread of human feet 
other than those of the roving Indian. 

However, the country had become known to the Eng- 
lish on the Atlantic seaboard before the outbreak of the 
Revolutionary War. The second half of the eighteenth 
century was not far advanced when adventurous hunt- 
ers, fur traders and even surveyors began to make their 
way over the mountains, and descended the streams in 
their westward course. Gradually they penetrated into 
what is now central Kentucky. Such names as Mooney 
and Fitzpatrick not only show the presence of the ubi- 
quitous Irishman, but also suggest that there must have 
been an occasional Catholic among the earliest explor- 
ers, nearly all of whom were from Virginia and North 
Carolina. Following these adventurers, perhaps insti- 
gated by the reports they brought back about the rare 
beauty, the extraordinary fertility, and the genial cli- 
mate of the country, home-seekers from Maryland as 
well as from the two states just mentioned soon com- 
menced to set up their tents in the “land of hill and 
vale.” + 

While, as in all pioneer settlements, there were rough 
characters among them, never perhaps was there a peo- 
ple of a more chivalrous, daring, and fearless spirit than 
the first white inhabitants of Kentucky. Nor were they 
without need of dauntless courage. Regarded as ene- 
the mouth of the Ohio. See also a reference to a letter from Shea 
to Collins in the latter’s History of Kentucky, I, p. 509. The statements 
that the Spaniards and English were in Kentucky at a very early date 
seem to have no historical probability. 

4 Later, settlers came from farther south, north and east, and even 


from Europe; but the great bulk of them was from Maryland, Virginia, 
and North Carolina. 


28 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


mies and usurpers by roving bands of red men who 
traversed the country in every direction, they lived, so 
to express it, with their lives in their hands. ‘These 
dangers were abated from late in 1782, when General 
George Rogers Clark inflicted a severe defeat upon the 
Indian allies of the English north of the Ohio. Yet 
not until General Anthony Wayne’s historic victory 
over the Miamis and allied tribes on the Maumee River, 
August 20, 1794, and the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, 
could the frontiersman of Kentucky feel that he was 
free from the peril of redskins ambushed in the forests.” 

The ban placed by the parliament of Great Britain 
on emigration to the west was intended largely at least 
to keep the people of its earlier colonies out of the 
country formerly claimed by the French. Not unlikely 
the measure was taken in part as a means of fulfilling 
an article of the Treaty of Paris (February 10, 1763), 
whereby England guaranteed liberty of conscience and 
freedom of worship to the inhabitants, whether white 
or red, of the territory ceded by France. 'This delicate 
task could not with prudence have been entrusted to 
the English settlements, or even successfully executed, 
had their people been permitted to take up homes at will 
in that part of America. 

However, the inhibition received scant respect as re- 
gards Kentucky. Yet emigration thither, properly 
- speaking, did not begin until 1774, when the bonds be- 
tween the colonies and the mother-country were near 
the breaking point. Among the earliest emigrants, 
there can be no doubt, were adherents of the faith of 


S SPALDING, Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky, 
pp. 18-21; Cotiins, op. cit., I, 257, and II, 139-140, 769; Bryant, A Pop- 
ular History of the United States, IV, 116-118; Etson, History of the 
United States, II, 225-226. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 29 


Lord Baltimore’s original palatinate. Still the first 
Catholics, of whom we have any definite record, to settle 
there were Doctor George Hart, William Coomes and 
family, and perhaps Abraham and Isaac White. They 
moved westward in the spring of 1775. Coomes was a 
native of Maryland, but went to Kentucky from Vir- 
ginia. Hart was born in Ireland, and had made his 
home in Maryland. He was probably Kentucky’s first 
physician. Similarly Mrs. Coomes appears to have 
been the state’s first school-teacher.°® 

While, as the Hon. Ben. J. Webb suggests, members 
of the same religion could doubtless have been found 
in the steady stream of home-seekers that flowed into 
that region for ten years after the above date, the real 
Catholic emigration began in 1785. At the outset, they 
were nearly all from Maryland, and principally from 
Saint Mary’s, Charles, and Prince George’s counties.’ 

Still, other parts of the former Baltimore Colony 
contributed their quota towards Kentucky’s early Cath- 
olic population. Washington County may serve as an 
instance. We learn from a letter of the pastor at Saint 
Mary’s, Hagerstown, that by the summer of 1796 the 
parish had become depleted through emigration. Few 
of the faith remained, other than those who had not the 
means to go west. Hagerstown was a center whence 
various stations were attended in northern Maryland 
and southern Pennsylvania. Now Father Bodkin re- 
commended that it should be made a mission, and Km- 
mitsburg appointed as the place of residence for the 
priest. 


6 SPALDING, op. cit., pp. 23-24; Wess, op. cit., 24-25. 

7 SPALDING, op. cit., p. 25; WeBB, op. cit., pp. 24, 26. 

8 Rev. Francis Bodkin, O.P., Hagerstown, Maryland, to Bishop Car- 
roll, Baltimore, July 5, 1796, (Baltimore Diocesan Archives, Case 1, T. 5). 


30 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


We may form some idea of the exaggerated reports 
spread abroad about the new west from the fact that 
many were induced to leave a country so wholesome 
and beautiful and a soil so productive as that in the 
neighborhood of Hagerstown. It was believed that 
wealth surely awaited those who went to Kentucky. 
Rumor, in fact, pictured the land beyond the mountains 
as a veritable agricultural Kl Dorado. As Bishop 
Spalding elegantly expresses it: 

The reports carried back to Virginia and Maryland by the first 
adventurers who had visited Kentucky, were of so glowing a 
character as to stimulate many others to emigrate thither. The 
new country was represented as a sort of promised land, with 
exuberant and fertile soil; and if not flowing with milk and honey, 
at least teeming with all kinds of game. This rich country now lay 
open to the enterprising activity of the white man; and its fertile 
lands could be obtained by occupation, or purchased for a mere 
trifle; and the emigrants might subsist, like the Indians, by hunt- 
ing, until the soil could be prepared for cultivation.? 

It was but natural that these fascinating stories 
should make a strong appeal to the people in Saint 
Mary’s, Charles, and Prince George’s counties, Mary- 
land. Much of the land there, through long and un- 
scientific cultivation, had become greatly impoverished. 
Accordingly, in 1785, the heads of sixty Catholic fam- 
ilies in these three counties, but the greater number res- 
idents of Saint Mary’s, formed a league, and pledged 
themselves to emigrate to Kentucky as circumstances 
should permit."° They were aware of the dangers they 
would have to encounter, not on the way only, but even 
after they had settled in their new homes. With the 
tales of the beauty, climate, and productiveness of this 
earthly paradise were interspersed those of the horrors 


BID TCL iD: 
10 Wess, op. cit., p. 27. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 31 


committed by the red man. But that was America’s 
age of chivalry. Such perils could not chill the growing 
spirit of adventure in the brave hearts that had just 
thrown off the yoke of dependence. 

Like their forefathers who had _ sacrificed much 
for conscience’ sake, these sturdy Catholic pioneers 
treasured their faith above every worldly possession. 
They realized, too, that prudence is the better part of 
valor. Thus the league of families had a twofold pur- 
pose. Settling in the same locality would not merely 
serve as a protection against bands of Indian marau- 
ders; it would likewise the more readily secure the con- 
solations of religion through the services of a priest. 

In the association were relations as well as friends of 
Father John Carroll who had just been appointed pre- 
fect apostolic of the United States, and was therefore 
on the way to become the father of our American hier- 
archy. Some of the leaders of the alliance no doubt 
consulted him on the project. Nor could he have failed 
to praise it. Tradition at least tells us that he encour- 
aged the scheme of Catholic colonization, and promised 
either to send a clergyman with the first band of settlers, 
or to procure a pastor for their souls as soon as possible. 
Be this as it may, he was naturally anxious to build up 
the Church in the vast extent of territory under his 
spiritual jurisdiction. 

Twenty-five of the sixty families must have left 
Maryland at once, for we are told that they reached 
Kentucky the same year in which the league was 
formed. ‘The remainder followed in the years 1786, 
1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, and, 1791." Among those who 
migrated in 1787 or 1788 were Philip Miles and his son 


11 SPALDING, op. cit., pp. 25-27; Wess, op. cit., pp. 27-28. The United 


32 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Henry, from near Leonardtown, Saint Mary’s Coun- 
ty. They were relations of the subject of our narra- 
tive, the Right Rev. Richard Pius Miles, Father of the 
Church in Tennessee.” Meanwhile others joined in the 
emigration, swelling the westward march to enormous 
proportions. As Bishop Spalding expresses it: “Men 
and women, young and old, caught up this spirit; and 
soon nearly half of Virginia and Maryland was in mo- 
tion for the west.” * 

The rush for “the land of promise” became particu- 
larly noticeable after the cessation of danger that came 
with Wayne’s victory and the treaty with the Miamis, 
in 1794 and 1795. Prior to that time, as the banks of 
the Ohio between Cincinnati and Louisville were es- 
pecially infested by Indians, the more ordinary route 
for the home-seekers was overland to Pittsburgh, and 
thence down the river in flat boats to Limestone, the 
present Maysville, Kentucky. From that point the 
pioneers labored their way through the forests to the 
properties they had already secured, or to the location 
wherein they hoped to settle. It was a weary method 
of travel for even the stout hearts of the past. 

So journeyed the first five and twenty families of 
the league.* Of the remainder some no doubt followed 
the same route. Others braved the greater danger, and 


States Catholic Miscellany of December 1, 1824 (Vol. III, pp. 337 ff) has 
an article on this subject that is full of inaccuracies. 

The writer is a lineal descendant, in the fifth generation, of the 
Leonard Hamilton and Benedict Spalding mentioned on page 27 of 
Bishop Spalding’s Sketches of the:Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky. 

12 Wess, op. cit., p. 68. Webb nowhere speaks of any connection 
between Philip Miles and Nicholas Miles, the father of Bishop Miles; 
but the descendants of these two noted pioneers almost feel that they 
are still related. 

13 Op. cit., p. 23. 14 Wess, op. cit., p. 27. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 33 


descended the river to Louisville. In this way, they 
lessened their journey by land in Kentucky by nearly 
two thirds, as well as avoided much of its hardship. 
Many of the band must have been keenly disappointed 
when they reached their future homes on Pottinger’s 
Creek, for they were not slow to discover that the soil 
in this locality, with the exception of a few purchases, 
was poor in the extreme. 

History records much sharp practice in the acquisi- 
tion and sale of land at that period. Possibly the Cath- 
olics who belonged to the above league were victims of 
such unfair dealing. At any rate, it is generally be- 
lieved that speculators in the east obtained large areas 
in Kentucky, and sold this part of it to these prospective 
colonists by misrepresentation before they left Mary- 
land.” The tradition seems well grounded, for other- 
wise it would be difficult to understand why they set- 
tled in so barren a part of the country. Perhaps, how- 
ever, undue credence in the current reports led them 
to buy without seeing, for they believed that every part 
of the ultramontane region was fertile. 

Be this as it may, it was now too late to remedy the 
error. A partial payment had been made, and bonds 
given for the rest. Few of the settlers, thus deprived 
of their means, had any option but to remain where they 
were. Might not the whole affair have been the prov- 
idence of God who knows that all too often worldly and 
spiritual wealth do not happily harmonize? 

This Catholic colony, called the Pottinger’s Creek 
Settlement from the stream that ran through it, lay in 
what is now western Marion and southern Nelson Coun- 
ty. It was the first formed in the state, and at the date 


15 [bid., p. 32. This tradition still exists. 
4 


34 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of its foundation was all in the latter county, which then 
had many times its present area. In connection with it 
we have an example of sacrifice on the part of the pio- 
neers of the Church in the west for the sake of their 
souls that has edified more than one historian. Al- 
though the land was of the poorest, and the situation 
uninviting, many still took up homes there. The 
nucleus of a large Catholic colony had settled in the 
localty. ‘Thither therefore they went, in spite of tem- 
poral disadvantages, that they might secure the con- 
solations of their religion for themselves and _ their 
children.*® 

Some of the later arrivals of the alliance fared better 
than the first. They did not make their purchases until 
they reached Kentucky, which enabled them to select 
more fertile farms in adjacent districts, or even in the 
bottom-lands along Pottinger’s Creek and the little 
river known as the Rolling Fork. Philip Miles, a near 
relative, if not a brother, of Nicholas, the bishop’s father, 
seems to have followed this wiser course; for he bought 
a beautiful home in sight of the present village of New 
Hope, where his descendants lived until within the mem- 
ory of the writer. He was a man of fine judgment, and 
quite possibly Nicholas Miles acted on his advice when 
he himself determined to move to Kentucky.“ 


16 Jbid., p. 32; SPALDING, op. cit., p. 25. 

17 We are inclined to think that Philip and Nicholas Miles were 
brothers. It is said that Bishop Miles claimed near relationship with 
“Harry” Miles who succeeded his father (Philip) on the plantation 
near New Hope; and that he always visited him when he came to 
Kentucky. Edward Miles, a son of Harry, who lived and died on the 
farm owned first by his giandfather, and then by his father, also claimed 
a rather close relationship with the bishop. Father Thomas Miles, S.J., 
a brother of Edward, claimed near kinship with the subject of our 
narrative. All of which indicates that Harry Miles and the bishop were 
first cousins, and Philip and Nicholas Miles brothers. The Catholic 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 35 


Most of the Catholic colonists who were not members 
of the league, more prudent as regards their earthly 
fortunes, chose other sections of the state for their 
abodes. Yet with few exceptions, wherever they set- 
tled, they purchased contiguous tracts of land from 
the same motive that inspired the association in Mary- 
Jand and brought so many together on Pottinger’s 
Creek. Thus this proto-Catholic settlement in Ken- 
tucky was followed in quick succession by a number of 
similar communities. 

The colony on Hardin’s Creek, Marion County, for 
instance, and probably that on Elkhorn Creek, Scott 
County, long known as Saint Francis’, began in the 
following year (1786). The Cartwright’s Creek Set- 
tlement, in Marion and Washington counties, and that 
of “Poplar Neck’, near Bardstown, Nelson County, 
had begun before the close of 1787. ‘Then came the 
one on the Rolling Fork, Marion County, in 1788. 
The colony near Hardinsburg, Breckinridge County, 
dates from 1790. Both 1792 and 1795 are given as the 
date of the birth of the Cox’s Creek or Fairfield Set- 
tlement, which was in Nelson County.” 

However, it is noteworthy that, with the exception 
of Saint Francis’, all these Catholic communities took 
root in what was then Nelson County. This civic divis- 
ion of Kentucky, therefore, holds in the Church of 
that state the place which Saint Mary’s County holds 
in the Church of Maryland—the cradle of its Catholic- 
ity. Nelson was the fourth county established in Ken- 
Advocate of February 19, 1885, gives an obituary of “Brother G. Miles”, 
a Jesuit lay brother in Missouri, who, it says, was born in Kentucky, 
in 1802, and “was a relative of the late Bishop Miles. ...and of Rev. 


Thomas H. Miles, S.J.” 
18 Wess, op. cit., p. 26, and passim. 


36 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


tucky, the act being passed by the general assembly 
of Virginia in 1784, eight years before the erection of 
the territory into a state, and the name given it in honor 
of ex-Governor Thomas Nelson.” Subsequently, by 
division and subdivision, it became the parent stem of 
many other counties. The old cathedral church still 
remains Bardstown’s greatest glory, just as its chief 
pride is that it was once an episcopal city, whilst its 
keenest regret is the loss of its dignity as a place of resi- 
dence for a Catholic bishop. 

Thus from Nelson the faith largely spread through 
Kentucky, in the same way that it had radiated from 
Saint Mary’s through Maryland, whence it passed over 
the mountains. Indeed, for a number of years Nel- 
son’s original seven settlements comprised the greater 
part of the Catholic population of Kentucky, which 
Father Badin estimated at about three hundred fam- 


19 Kentucky was the Indian name for that part of the country, which 
was a common hunting ground for various tribes. Its forests, under- 
growth, cane-brakes, and ravines, together with the battles of the aborig- 
ines on its soil, have deservedly given the word the meaning, whether 
right or wrong, of “the dark and bloody ground.” The attempt of Colonel 
Richard Henderson and his company of land speculators, in 1775, to 
organize more than half of the present state into a separate common- 
wealth, under the designation of Transylvania, failed dismally; for in 
1776 Virginia claimed all the territory now included in the state by 
virtue of her royal charter, and established it into a county. In 1780, 
she divided it into three counties, to which she gave the names of 
Fayette, Lincoln, and Jefferson. In 1784, Nelson was added to the 
number ; in 1785, Bourbon, Mercer, and Madison; and in 1788, Mason and 
Woodford. In 1790, the country became a distinct part of the Union 
under the title of “Territory south of the Ohio.” In 1792, the State of 
Kentucky was erected by the national congress, being the first created 
west of the mountains. The same year (1792), Washington, destined 
long to be the home of the subject of our narrative, Scott, Shelby, Logan, 
Clark, Hardin, and Green counties came into existence. During the 
greater part of this time the struggle for conquest by the whites and 
defense by the Indians was one of the bravest and most sanguinary in 
American annals. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 37 


ilies as early as 1793.°° Immigration, still mostly from 
Maryland, continued to augment the number of the 
faithful. Later these first colonies sent out nucleuses 
of other similar settlements into different parts of the 
state. | 

Smaller Catholic communities or isolated families 
were also scattered here and there in widely separated 
places. Unfortunately, they could seldom be visited 
by the few missionaries, were out of touch with Catholic 
influences, and received little or no instruction in their 
religion. Because cf these privations, together with the 
environments in which they lived, they or their children 
were soon lost to the Church. 

A like sad story has to be told of Saint Francis’ (la- 
ter Saint Pius’, and now White Sulphur), in Scott 
County. 'That mission seems to have got a wrong start. 
Webb thinks it had too much wealth, with the resultant 
spirit of pride. At any rate, every priest in charge 
of the place had trouble with the people.” Catholicity 
has almost died out in the locality, and it is said that 
few of those descended from the founders of the col- 
ony profess the faith of their forefathers. Perhaps 
the whole history of that settlement is a verification of 
the old adage: “The enemies of man are the world, the 
flesh and the devil.” 

The seven notable Catholic communities that origi- 
nated in Nelson County were either already founded or 
in process of formation when Nicholas Miles, father of 
the future bishop and apostle of Tennessee, left his 
home in the east. The precise time of his arrival in 
Kentucky can not now be ascertained. But the date 

20 SPALDING, op. cit., p. 65; Wess, op. cit., p. 163. 


21 Wess, op. cit., p. 88. 
22 Many documents attest this fact. 


38 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of the deed for his farm in Prince George’s County, 
Maryland, to the Rev. Joseph Messenger, August 6, 
1795, indicates that he started for the west late in that 
year or early in the next.” 

No doubt he had been in correspondence with Philip 
Miles, or other relations and friends among the earlier 
pioneers. From these he would have learned the diffi- 
culty, if not impossiblity, of procuring in the new coun- 
try household, farm, and other utensils, as well as arti- 
cles that make for the beauty and comfort of a home. 
Thus, for he was not only of a practical turn of mind, 
but also in good circumstances, we may believe that he 
carried as many of these chattels with him as he well 
could. Many of the wealthier emigrants at that time 
took such a precaution. That Nicholas Miles followed 
this wiser course is suggested by the fact that we dis- 
covered no record of any sales by him in Maryland, 
except that of his farm. It would also indicate that 
he transported his colored servants at the same time, 
especially since it would have been expensive to pro- 
cure such help in a young state still quite unsettled. 

Now that danger from Indians was passed, two log- 
ical ways lay open for the journey. One was via the 
national highroad to Pittsburgh, and then down the 
Ohio River in flat boats to Louisville; the other across 
Virginia, through the Cumberland Gap, and into the 
almost untouched forests primeval of Kentucky. As 
he was able to meet the greater expense of the first 
route, one is inclined to think that he chose it rather 
than the latter, with the length of time it required, the 
hardships and ceaseless toil it involved, and the anxiety 


23 Liber J. R. M., No. 3, pp. 586-589, Recorder’s Office, Marlboro, 
Maryland. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 39 


incident to the care of the number of persons under his 
charge. 

However, it will be remembered that Nicholas Miles 
had eight colored slaves in 1790. He probably had 
more by this time. Possibly, therefore, he may have 
sent his wife, children, and colored women by the easier 
way, together with one or two men servants to look 
after their needs; whilst he himself travelled by the lat- 
ter route, having with him the rest of the colored men 
to help with the chattels and guard whatever domestic 
animals he took to the west. Whichever way he jour- 
neyed, the old-time covered emigrant-wagon was in- 
dispensable for the portage and protection of the wom- 
en folk and equipment, whether for house or farm. He 
was a builder by occupation. ‘Thus, in case he went to 
Kentucky by the northern route, he and his colored men 
could themselves have constructed the simple boats on 
which they descended the Ohio.” 

The hospitality for which Kentucky is noted was then 
in its flower. On their arrival, therefore, the wayfarers 

24 The earthly remains of the writer’s great grand-father, Joseph 
O’Daniel, lie somewhere in the Cumberland Gap. He was on his way 
with his family from Maryland to Kentucky, in the first years of the 
nineteenth century. When almost through the break in the mountains, 
he retraced his steps in order to have something made at a blacksmith 
shop that he had passed only a short distance, but told the family to 
continue their way, and he would soon overtake them. As he did not 
return as soon as was expected, they waited for him. Two days or 
more thus went by. Then his son Joseph (the writer’s grandfather) and 
a colored man went back to look for him. To their horror they learned 
that he had been captured, taken into the mountains, robbed and slain 
by thieves, who made away with his fine horse. In those days it was 
not an uncommon thing for such a catastrophe to befall single travellers 
or small bodies bound for the west while they were in the fastnesses 
of the Cumberland Mountains. Unable to recover their loss, the sor- 


rowing family journeyed on to central Kentucky, where they located 
in the Cartwright’s Creek Settlement. 


40 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


were no doubt sheltered by friends, especially by Philip 
Miles, until they could secure a home of their own. 
But it would seem that the head of the newcomers was 
in no hurry to establish himself definitely. Possibly 
he wished to get a better idea of the trend of the settle- 
ments, and engaged in his former business until he 
found a location that suited him. No less staunch in 
his faith than practical in the affairs of the world, the 
father of the future bishop wanted his homestead with- 
in ready reach of the busy priests as well as on good soil. 
He would have his family, whose souls he prized above 
earthly treasure, in a place where they would be under 
the wholesome influence of the Church and able to prac- 
tise their religion. 

As the reader will recall, the Cox’s Creek Settlement 
was the last of the notable Catholic colonies established 
in the early days of Nelson County. It lay in the north- 
ern part of the county, slightly to the east, whence it 
gradually stretched into the present Spencer County. 
The country was rolling, beautiful, and well watered; 
the climate healthy; the soil not only fertile but likewise 
adapted to almost every kind of produce. Although the 
settlement was little more than started at the time of 
Nicholas Miles’ arrival in Kentucky, some of Mary- 
land’s finest old Catholic families soon began to take 
up homes there. In 1797, for instance, Clement Gar- 
diner, a wealthy man, purchased a large farm where 
now stands the town of Fairfield.” Doubtless these 
people had already attracted Father Badin’s attention, 
for Gardiner set apart a large room in his house te 
serve as a chapel for the neighborhood. 

29 Gardiner purchased his farm from “Nicholas Paul alias Powell”. 


The deed for it is dated July 3, 1797, and is in Deed Book 7, pp. 191-192, 
in the Recorder’s Office, Bardstown, Kentucky. 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 41 


Few of the Catholic colonies held out such bright 
worldly prospects as did that just beginning on Cox’s 
Creek; nor did any give better promise in matters re- 
ligious. Nicholas Miles did not leave Maryland under 
stress of need, for he possessed an ample sufficiency on 
which to live in comfort there. Although advanced in 
years, he braved the hardships of the western wilds in 
the interest of his children. He determined therefore 
to make his home in this newest Catholic settlement, 
which offered splendid opportunities for them, both 
temporal and spiritual. Besides, some of the friends of 
his boyhood and young manhood had located in that 
vicinity. 

Towards the end of 1799, he purchased a farm of 
somewhat more than two hundred acres from one Zeb- 
ulon Collings. The fertile tract of land lay on F'ro- 
man’s Creek, a branch of Cox’s Creek.”° It was situated 
perhaps six miles, a little to the northeast, from Bards- 
town, the county seat; and not much less west from the 
present village of Fairfield, that afterwards rose on 
the farm owned by Clement Gardiner, almost in the 
center of the settlement. The location must have ap- 
pealed strongly to Nicholas Miles for his purpose. In 
those days, Catholics considered themselves fortunate if 
they were so near a church or chapel. But our anxious 
father had one on each side of his home; for, besides 
the station at Clement Gardiner’s, there was another 
at the house of Thomas Gwynn, half way between Miles’ 
and Bardstown, near the site of the present Nazareth 
Academy. Moreover, Saint Joseph’s, a small log struc- 
ture, stood just outside the capital of the county. 

26 Collings’ deed to Miles for the farm is dated December 2, 1799, 


and is in Deed Book 5, p. 502, in the Recorder’s Office, Bardstown, 
Kentucky. 


42 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Kagerness to get settled down in his new home, one 
may readily believe, caused the good man to take pos- 
session of his purchase at once, and to build a house. 
Doubtless also, like those of even the wealthiest among 
the pioneers, it was a temporary structure of logs adapt- 
ed to meet the needs of the family until a more commo- 
dious dwelling could be erected. 

Here Nicholas Miles began life anew in Kentucky 
at the age of nearly sixty years. The change must 
have been no little trial. But that was a hardy period, 
and he was a man of his time, as well as one who would 
shrink from no hardship in behalf of his family. ‘The 
days of fear from raids by Indians were over; the man- 
ners of the people had become somewhat less rude. 
But heroic labor was still required to clear away the 
forests, fence in the fields, prepare the soil for cultiva- 
tion, and supply the farm with domestic animals. Pro- 
tection of the crops and the younger stock from birds 
and wild beasts offered a serious problem. ‘There were 
few places of market, little ready money, and few arti- 
cles of merchandise for sale. 

However, these disadvantages were counterbalanced 
by the ease with which game of every kind could be pro- 
cured from the forests. ‘The men and boys—often even 
the women—went armed for this purpose, as also for 
protection against bears and wildcats or a chance pack 
of wolves. 'The table was ever supplied with the choicest 
venison. Fresh milk and butter were plentiful. The 
bread was made from the meal of Indian corn cooked 
in a marvelous variety of ways. It provided a whole- 
some food on which the pioneers throve. 

Fortunately the women were not less brave or indus- 
trious than the men. They carded and spun wool and 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 43 


flax or hemp, raised and prepared by the men, wove it 
into cloth, and made clothes for the family. The skins 
of wild animals, particularly those of deer, were not 
infrequently used for the same purpose. Moccasins 
often served as shoes. Caps made from the furs of rac- 
coons or rabbits were common articles of apparel. For 
years all classes and sexes dressed principally in home- 
spun, the cost of overland transportation in the primi- 
tive way making finer and more delicate fabrics a rare 
luxury for even the wealthy. ‘The richest were not too 
proud to wear at home garments wrought on the spot. 

Plain clothes were the custom of the day. The gen- 
tler sex did little prinking. Yet the women folk are 
said to have looked quite neat in the quaint costumes 
made by their own hands. Perhaps not a few dainty 
dames of today would be surprised to learn that, in the 
summer time, their great-grandmothers or even grand- 
mothers in Kentucky went to church with their home- 
made bonnets decked with the silk, tassel, and green 
husks of Indian corn. Vanity has ever been the privi- 
lege of woman. Still this innocent adornment more 
than once brought down upon ‘her the denunciation of 
the zealous missionary.” 

Cisterns or wells were few, if any. For this reason, 
the houses or cabins were ever located near a spring. 
The furniture was ordinarily of the most primitive 
character. Although that in the Miles home was no 
doubt somewhat better than the general run, even from 
the start, the following description gives an idea of the 
interior of the dwellings of most of the pioneers at the 
time Nicholas Miles settled in Kentucky. 

27In days gone by the writer often listened to his grandmother and 


other old people tell of the scoldings they used to get in sermons for the 
vanity they displayed in their dress. 


44 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


No pictures ornamented the bare walls. Stools 
served the purpose of chairs; the tables were slabs of 
timber roughly put together; wooden plates and ves- 
sels took the place of our modern chinaware. Even 
the spoons and forks were either wooden or tin. ‘The 
beds, if not lain on the floor, were placed on rough 
puncheons, supported by legs of a kind, or by wooden 
pins fastened in the sides of the house. All these arti- 
cles were home-made, except the tin forks and spoons, 
which were few. Long-stemmed gourds, grown on the 
premises, were used for drinking purposes. Tin cups 
were a luxury almost as rare as an iron fork. ‘The 
pocket or hunting knife served at the table as well as 
in the field or on the chase. Perhaps bear and buffalo 
skins no longer principally constituted the blankets 
for the beds; yet these articles were still manufactured 
at home. Sheets, when present, were a delicacy made 
of unbleached flax or hemp spun and woven by the 
ladies of the household. 

Such was the miliew in which grew up Tennessee’s 
first Catholic bishop, who went to Kentucky when only 
five years of age. It was a great change from the more 
elite life in older Maryland, yet a good preparation for 
the work that lay before him. Besides, his father 
located happily in the west, for the Cox’s Creek Settle- 
ment was one of the most faithful to its religion in the 
state, and offered good temporal advantages. It pros- 
pered from the start. An idea of its growth and of 
the character of the people who founded it may be 


gleaned from the Hon. Ben. Webb, who writes: 

In the year 1800, the Cox’s Creek Settlement, afterwards 
better known as that of Fairfield, was composed of between forty 
and fifty families. The names borne by the heads of these families, 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 45 


so far as the writer has been able to secure them, were: Clement 
Gardiner, Nicholas Miles, Thomas Elder, Francis Coomes, Zach- 
ariah Aud, Thomas Aud, James Knott, Austin Montgomery, Rich- 
ard Adams, Thomas Higdon, Austin Clements, Wilfred Wathen, 
Raphael Hagan, Richard Coomes, Walter Simpson, James Simp- 
son, Archibald Pitt, Richard Jarboe, Valentine Thomson, John 
Payne, James Speaks, Benedict Smith, Joseph Gardiner, Charles 
Wathen, Thomas Lilly, John Lilly, Thomas Brewer, Richard 
Clark, Daniel Rogers, Clement Clark, Ignatius Drury, — Mitch- 
ell, Charles Warren, James Spalding, Joseph Clark, — Daugh- 
erty, Hezekiah Lucket and Hilary Drury.?® 


To those conversant with the Catholic history of Ken- 
tucky this list reveals a community well worthy of note. 
Some of the best known names in the annals of Catholic- 
ity in the state appear there. A number of the per- 
sons mentioned were not only exemplary characters; 
they also deserved well of the Church and their adopted 
county. Webb speaks of the cluster in terms of spe- 
cial praise, and gives sketches of several of those who 
composed it. From them or their descendants have 
come a goodly quota of vocations to the ministry of the 
Church and to our various sisterhoods. 

Nicholas Miles himself was by no means the least 
worthy or unimportant personage in this group of fine 
families. God blessed him both temporally and spiritu- 
ally. Indeed, in spite of his age when he went to the 
new west, he seems to have prospered more than most 
of his neighbors. Honest and possessed of an excellent 
character, in addition to a good mind and judgment, 
he soon became one of the most influential citizens of 
Nelson County. If we may trust a still extant tradi- 
tion, the people admired him, trusted him, and sought 
his advice. His word was as good as his bond. So far 
as the writer has ascertained, he held no political posi- 


23 Wess, op. cit., p. 114. 


46 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


tion. Possibly, imbued with the true Miles spirit, he 
wanted none. He did not need such remuneration for 
the support of his family, and he had little desire for 
honors. 

It has been handed down to us that he was an affec- 
tionate husband and a kind father, anxious to bring up 
his children in the fear and love of God. Doubtless in 
this duty he found the best of helpmates in his wife, 
whom tradition represents as an excellent lady and fond 
mother. Like many of the early Catholic women in 
Kentucky, she was pious, deeply attached to her relig- 
ion, and little imbued with the spirit of the world. 
In short, she was a worthy mother of the worthy son 
whose life is sketched in these pages. 

A family blessed with parents like these could not 
but be happy. Perhaps their greatest sorrow was the 
lack of priests properly to attend to the spiritual needs 
of the people. Kentucky was a distant, lonesome, and 
arduous field for which it was hard to procure mission- 
aries. Letters show that this problem formed one of 
Archbishop Carroll’s chief difficulties and regrets. 
Most of those who undertook the task either became 
disheartened by the trials and left it for other spheres 
of labor, or sank under the weight of the burden. Much 
of the time from the date of Nicholas Miles’ arrival 
there (1796), until the summer of 1805, Father Badin 
was the only priest in the state. Even when he had 
assistance, the various missions could not be visited of- 
tener than once in a month or six weeks. When he 
was left alone the intervals between the ministrations 
were much longer. 

Fortunately the people had been well trained in 
Maryland. Even when there were no divine services on 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 47 


Sunday, the best Catholics gathered at the church, chap- 
el, or station, where they read the mass prayers, said 
litanies, and recited the Rosary. The family of Nicho- 
las Miles, one can not doubt, was one of the most faith- 
ful in attendance at these pious exercises. Tradition 
has it that at times mass was offered up in his house; 
but ordinarily this sacred function was performed at 
Clement Gardiner’s (or Saint Michael’s, Fairfield) 
and Thomas Gwynn’s, which were more conveniently 
situated for the faithful. On such occasions the Miles 
thought nothing of riding horseback to those places and 
Saint Joseph’s, or even to Poplar Neck, five or six miles 
the other side of Bardstown. 

The sacrifices which the Catholics of that day made 
for the sake of their religion stand out in bold contrast 
with the spirit of ease and indifference that charac- 
terizes many in our generation. It has been said that 
in. his after life as priest and bishop the subject of our 
narrative often spoke of how strict his parents were that 
everyone should attend mass whenever possible. He 
loved them, and his gratitude went out to them with 
special force because of the way in which they looked 
after the interests of his soul. 

Another topic on which he loved to dwell was how, 
in his youthful days, he went to church riding horseback 
behind his father or mother, or an older brother or sister. 
Not infrequently the father of a family would take one 
child in his lap, while another, or even two, were perched 
behind him, their little legs dangling down by the horse’s 
side. It was a heroic time that made staunch men and 
women. 

One of the greatest problems with which the pioneers 
of Kentucky had to contend was the education of their 


48 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


children. Still, largely thanks to Irish schoolmasters 
who emigrated to America in numbers, more than one 
intellectual giant was reared in the backwoods of that 
state. No doubt the same difficulty gave Nicholas anx- 
ious moments. Some of his children were past the 
school age when he moved west. There the older girls 
very likely followed the custom among the better fam- 
ilies of the day, and helped the mother to instruct their 
younger brothers and sisters. It has also been handed 
down to us that Nicholas Miles kept a private tutor 
at his home. ‘he tradition is borne out by the fact 
that Richard had laid the foundations of a good educa- 
tion by the time the Dominicans arrived in the neigh- 
borhood. 

Nicholas Miles, as has been seen, fared well in Ken- 
tucky—perhaps even beyond his fondest hopes. In 
1812 he added another small tract of land to his former 
possessions. But in the next year, possibly unable 
longer to look after his farm because of age, he seems 
to have purchased some acres where the town of Bloom- 
field now stands, and to have started a country store.” 
At any rate, there is something of a tradition to the 
effect that he died while engaged in business there, and 
that he and his son Kdward were among the founders 
of the town, if it does not even owe its existence to their 
initiative. ‘The old homestead of Edward Miles, al- 
most palatial in size and appearance, still stands just 
outside Bloomfield. We could not discover whether 
it was built by him or by his father.” 

29 Deed Book 9, p. 476, and Deed Book 10, pp. 48-50, in Recorder’s 
Office, Bardstown, Kentucky. 

30 Will Book E, pp. 28-29, Recorder’s Office, Bardstown Kentucky, 


gives the will of Nicholas Miles. It is dated February 27, and was 
probated October 20, 1823. His wife Ann and son Edward were execu- 


KENTUCKY AND HIS BOYHOOD THERE 49 


Meanwhile the children married into some of the best 
Catholic families in Nelson County. Charity, the first 
to leave the parental home, was united in marriage to 
Ralph Lancaster by Father Badin on April 21, 1798. 
Milly, or Matilda, became the wife of Clement Hagan, 
February 4, 1799, Father Badin officiating again. 
Thomas married Christina Gardiner, daughter of Clem- 
ent Gardiner, whose house long served as a station for 
the people of Cox’s Creek Settlement. ‘This was on 
December 9, 1805. Father Badin also presided at this 
ceremony. When Mary joined in wedlock with Robert 
Livers, November 8, 1806, she obtained the muiunistra- 
tion of Father Charles Nerinckx. ‘The tireless Badin, 
who ordinarily attended that mission, must have been 
on an apostolic tour in another part of the state.” 

It was a common thing in those days for one daughter 
to remain single, at least until comparatively late in life, 
and play the role of good angel to the rest of the fam- 
ily. Ann Miles, unless she were the youngest girl, 
would seem to have taken this part in the home of her 
parents; for the register shows that she married Daniel 
Smith on June 23, 1815. Father John B. David, later 
coadjutor bishop of Bardstown, performed the cere- 
mony for her.” The inscription on the tombstone of 


tors. They gave a bond for eight thousand dollars. Thomas Miles 
and Robert Livers were their securities. 

31 Manuscript list of early marriages in Nelson County (in County 
Clerk’s Office, Bardstown) got up by William J. Dalmazzo from the rec- 
ords in the court house. 

32 See preceding note. The careful Webb is in error when he says 
(op. cit., p. 79) that this daughter of Nicholas Miles was named Cath- 
erine. Doubtless, however, he is correct in the statement that Daniel 
Smith belonged to Washington County, and later moved to Louisville, 
where he became one of the pillars of Saint Louis’ Church. The 
descendants of Nicholas Miles through these various marriages, like 
those of practically all the pioneer settlers of Kentucky, are scattered 
in many parts of the United States. 


5 


50 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


himself and wife Rebecca shows that Edward B. Miles 
married still later, and that she died first; while the 
settlement of his estate reveals the fact that he left no 
children. 

But God had a higher vocation in store for good 
Nicholas Miles’ youngest child, Richard. Tradition, 
both in the family and in Saint Joseph’s Province of 
Friars Preacher, represents him as a clever boy much 
given to piety. Possibly he was one of Father Badin’s 
altar boys for the stations at Thomas Gwynn’s and at 
Clement Gardiner’s. ‘The zealous missionary’s busy 
life left him little time to do much in the way of foster- 
ing vocations, which may have turned the mind of the 
pious youth towards the Order of Saint Dominic, in- 
stead of the priesthood in the ranks of the diocesan cler- 
gy. Of this, however, future pages will tell. 


CHAPTER III 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE'S 


PERHAPS we can not begin this chapter better than 
with a relation of the circumstances that led the Domin- 
icans to Kentucky contrary to their original plans. 
This course will involve a repetition, it is true, of much 
that has been told in the Life of the Right Rev. Ed- 
ward Dominic Fenwick, founder of Saint Rose’s, and 
later the first bishop of Cincinnati. Still the plan is no 
less necessary as a historical setting for any complete 
sketch of the I*ather of the Church in Tennessee than 
it was for the story of the apostle of Ohio. No man 
can be properly understood without a knowledge of 
his environments, and of the various currents of 
influence that flowed into the stream of his life. 

One of the prime motives that inspired the league of 
sixty families in Maryland for emigrating to Kentucky 
was the more certainly to secure a pastor for their souls; 
another was to render his labors easier and his life less 
lonely, as well as his work more effective, by having 
his flock gathered in one settlement." However, the 
scarcity of priests in the United States, the multitudi- 
nous calls for help, and the distance of the western mis- 
sion made it hard in the extreme for Father Carroll to 
send them a spiritual shepherd. There can be no doubt 
that the vicar apostolic’s heart went out to them in their 
privation. They were his charge, for his authority ex- 


1 SpapinG, Early Catholic Missions, p. 25; WEBB, op. cit., ps 27. 
51 


52 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


tended throughout the country, while not a few of them 
were perhaps connected with him by ties of both blood 
and friendship. But he could not do that which was 
impossible. 

In this way, two years elapsed before the five and 
twenty families of the league who emigrated first had 
the happiness of seeing an ambassador of Christ in 
their midst. One can more readily imagine than por- 
tray the joy that filled their hearts when he arrived, for 
their lonesomeness was all the more desolate because 
of the long privation of the succors of religion. ‘This 
early missionary was Father Charles Whelan who had 
formerly labored in New York City, where he began the 
first church in our greatest American metropolis. 

Father Whelan reached Kentucky during the year 
1787. Unfortunately we have only the meagerest rec- 
ord of his labors there. He was a member of the Order 
of Saint Francis, pious, zealous, humble, and gentle. 
He had lived in the refined society of Europe, and seems 
to have been of too mild a disposition to cope with the 
difficulties of rough backwoods life, where the people 
had perhaps become somewhat intractable through long 
deprivation of the sacraments, no less than through lack 
of spiritual guidance. 

All the while the toilsome missionary was overbur- 
dened with his ministry to others, he had no priestly 
companion with whom he could consult, or to admin- 
ister the waters of grace to his own soul. Rest he knew 
none. His incessant travels and his poverty did not 
even permit him to erect an humble home for himself, 
or a modest temple of worship for the people. Some of 
the Catholics treated him rudely, whilst the spirit of in- 
tolerance on the part of not a few non-Catholics wor- 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 53 


ried him. For these reasons, he returned to the east in 
the spring of 1790, after a little more than two years 
of labor in the wilds of Kentucky.’ 

Some six months later in the same year, the Rev. 
William Rohan appeared in the settlements. He had 
exercised the ministry in Virginia; but it is said that 
he went into Kentucky with a band of emigrants from 
North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Our most volu- 
minous Catholic historical writer, John Gilmary Shea, 
is greatly in error when he says that this missionary was 
a Dominican. Like his predecessor, Father Rohan was 
of Irish parentage. However, he seems to have been 
educated, if not born, in France. He performed the 
sacred functions in Kentucky for only a few months. 
Yet, before the close of 1790, he built the first Cath- 
olic church erected in the state. It was located in the 
Pottinger’s Creek Settlement, and was later consecrated 
to the service of God under the title of Holy Cross.’ 


2 Bapin, Origine et Progrés de la Mission du Kentucky, p. 2; SPALDING, 
Early Catholic Missions, pp. 41 ff, and Life of Bishop Flaget, pp. 73-74; 
Wess, op. cit., pp. 156-158; Sura, Life of Archbishop Carroll, passim; 
O’DanieEL, Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 71-72. 

Mr. Webb insinuates at least that Father Whelan was a man of 
violent temper and rather hard to get along with. However, he had 
various charges in the east, and the writer has found no accusation 
made against him in any of these places. On the contrary, he seems to 
have been a very mild character. He died at Saint Mary’s Church on 
White Clay Creek, New Castle County, Delaware, not far from Wil- 
mington, March. 21, 1806. At the time of his death he was pastor 
of Saint Mary’s, whence he attended several missions in Delaware and 
southeastern Pennsylvania. 

In his Life of Archbishop Carroll (pp 271-272), Doctor John G. Shea 
says that Father Paul de St. Pierre, O.C.D., was in Kentucky in 1785, 
and gives as his reference a letter of the Carmelite to the archbishop. 
However, it should be noted that there is no tradition of the presence 
of this priest in the state; nor have we been able to find any such 
document at Baltimore. 

3 Spaupinc, Early Catholic Missions, p. 49, and Life of Flaget, p. 74; 


54 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The next three years were a period of spiritual exile 
and desolation for the Catholics in the west like unto 
that of Babylon for the chosen people of old. Mean- 
while Father John Carroll had been appointed the first 
bishop of the United States, and had gone to England 
and received episcopal consecration from the Right 
Rev. Charles Walmesley, O.S.B., vicar apostolic of the 
Western District, August 15, 1790. ‘The new prelate 
reached Baltimore on his return journey, December 7 
of the same year.* His heart must have been saddened 
by the situation of the faithful in Kentucky, and by 
their appeals for a priest who could give them the bread 
of eternal life. Still, however much it pained him, it 
was long before he was able to grant their petition. 

God, in His wise counsel, knows well how to draw 
good out of evil. Thus He turned the afflictions 
brought upon the Church of Europe by the French Rey- 
olution into a source of blessings for that of the United 
States. Nor was Kentucky, mayhap in answer to the 
prayers of the good people there, overlooked in the di- 
vine dispensation. Among the ecclesiastical refugees 
who came to Baltimore were the Revs. Michael Bernard 
Barriére and Stephen Theodore Badin. ‘The former 
was already in priestly orders; the latter a subdea- 
con. Ordained on May 25, 1793, Father Badin was 
not only the first man raised to the priesthood by Arch- 
WEsp, op. cit., pp. 26, 70, 158-159; Sura, Life of Carroll, p. 272; 
O’DanieEL, Life of Fenwick, p. 72. 

It is certain that Father Rohan labored for a time in Virginia, shortly 
after he came to America. Spalding (page 29 of his Early Misstons) 
tells us that he was in Tennessee for more than a year before going to 
Kentucky, and that towards the end of his life he went to Saint Thomas’ 
Seminary, near Bardstown, “where he died piously, about the year 1832.” 


4SHEA, op. cit., pp. 359, 369; Guitpay, Life of Archbishop Carroll 
pp. 373, 383. 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 55 


bishop Carroll, but even the first upon whom that sacred 
office was conferred within the present limits of the 
United States.” 

These two clergymen were chosen for the desolate 
western mission. Barriéere received the appointment of 
vicar general. They began their journey on September 
6, 1793, and travelled by the easier and safer way of 
Pittsburgh. At Gallipolis, Ohio, they broke their river 
voyage in order to visit the remnants of the French still 
in the ill-fated Scioto Colony, which they found in a de- 
plorable spiritual situation. They left the boat again 
at Limestone (now Maysville), Kentucky, whence they 
struck out for Lexington and the Catholic settlement 
in Scott County. They arrived at Lexington in time 
for the younger priest to say mass there on the first 
Sunday of Advent, which fell that year on the first day 
of December. Father Barriere, for they had but one 
chalice, then rode sixteen miles in order to perform the 
same good office for the people in the Catholic settle- 
ment of Scott County.° 

With Father Badin this mass at Lexington marked 
the beginning of labors in Kentucky that extended over 
a period of more than a quarter of a century, as well 
as justly won for him the title of apostle of the state. 
Barriére soon tired of the hardships and loneliness of the 
backwoods, or perhaps felt it impossible to learn the 
English language at his age. He left the missions for 
New Orleans in the April of 1794.‘ In this way, did 

S BADIN, op. cit., p. 3 

6 BavIN, op. cit., p. 16; Spatpinc, Early Missions, passim; Wess, op. 
cit., passim; O’DANIEL, op. cit., pp. 72-73. For further information 
on Father Badin the reader is referred to Spalding’s Early Missions, 
Webb’s Centenary, and the author’s Life of Fenwick. 


7 After leaving Kentucky, Father Barriére was given a mission in 
an extensive district in southern Louisiana known as Attakapas. There 


56 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the youthful Badin, not yet twelve months ordained, 
and only five and twenty years of age, have the entire 
burden of the widely scattered Catholic settlements 
thrown on his shoulders. It must have been a severe 
shock for him. A man of less spirit would have lost 
courage, and followed the example of the senior clergy- 
man. 

The reader can imagine what exertions so extensive 
a pastoral charge demanded that the various stations 
might be even occasionally visited, confessions heard, 
and the faith kept alive in the hearts of the people. 
With all this, in addition to sick calls from far and near, 
the lonely missioner may be said to have practically lived 
on horseback, then the only way of travel. Fortunate- 
ly, nature had blessed him with a buoyant spirit that 
was proof against dejection, an iron constitution that 
nothing could break, and a nervous energy that seemed 
never to tire. The wonder is that he effected so much 
under almost unparalleled handicaps, rather than that 
he did not accomplish more. 

One can hardly but believe that the Catholics of 
Maryland had some knowledge of the difficulties with 
which their friends and relations in Kentucky had to 
contend in the practice of their religion. Yet the 
stream of immigration did not lessen. Krom this fact 
we may conclude that Bishop Carroll must have given 
solemn assurances to the home-seekers that the dearth 
of missionaries would soon be remedied. In fact, it 
he labored hard and faithfully until in extreme old age. In 1824, he 
returned to his native Bordeaux, but died eight days after his arrival. 
Father Charles L. Souvay, C.M., who feels that he left Kentucky because 
of his despair of learning the English language, has a very nice sketch 
of his life and work in Louisiana in the Saint Louis Catholic Historical 


Review for October, 1921 (Vol. III, pp. 242-294): “Rummaging through 
old Parish Records”. 


GOES /TO SAINT ROSE'S 57 


was towards the end of this religiously forlorn period 
that Nicholas Miles took his family to the west. Little 
Richard, then only five years of age, went with the 
rest. 

On February 26, 1797, Father Badin and his desolate 
flocks were gladdened by the arrival of the Rev. Mich- 
ael J. Fournier, an affable and zealous French clergy- 
man. Meantime the veteran missionary had put up a 
rectory or priest’s house near the center of the Catho- 
lic settlements, where now stands the mother-house of 
the Sisters of Loretto. He called it Saint Stephen’s. 
Here he and Father Fournier lived together for a time, 
although they made an apportionment of the missions. 

Badin, who was the vicar general, ordinarily attended 
the more distant places; but he retained Nelson County, 
in which the Cox’s Creek Settlement was situated, as 
a part of his charge. ‘Thus he was the pastor of Nich- 
olas Miles and the subject of our narrative. After a 
twelvemonth’s sojourn at Saint Stephen’s, Fournier 
built a residence for himself in the colony on the Roll- 
ing Fork, near the present Church of the Holy Name 
of Mary, Calvary. The division of the work, however, 
continued practically the same as before.” 

A little later, to the joy of all the faithful in the state, 
the clerical force in the missions was increased a hun- 
dred fold. The Rev. Anthony Salmon reached Saint 
Stephen’s on January 31, 1799. Father John Thayer 

8 Father Fournier, Kentucky, to Bishop Carroll, Baltimore, March 2, 
1797 (Baltimore Archives, Case 8 A, M 1); Badin to same, March 2, 1797 
(ibid, Case 1, E 7). Spalding’s Early Missions (p. 73) tells us that 
Fournier fled from France to England, and that he taught French in 
London for about four years before coming to America. 


9 Father Badin to Bishop Carroll, March 4, 1798 (Baltimore Archives, 
Case 1, E 9); Spaupine, Early Missions, pp. 74-75; Wess, op. cit., passim. 


58 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


arrived a few days later.’? Salmon and Fournier had 
been fellow students and brother priests in the Diocese 
of Blois, France, before the French Revolution. 'Thay- 
er, a former Presbyterian minister in Massachusetts, 
was converted and received into the Church in Rome, 
but studied and was ordained at Paris. Never before 
had Kentucky been blessed with so many ambassadors 
of Christ. All finally promised well for the spiritual 
welfare of the faithful there. 

In the new disposition of things Father Thayer took 
up his residence in Scott County, where a house was 
erected for him. Father Salmon made his home at 
Saint Stephen’s with the vicar general; whilst Father 
Fournier remained on the Rolling Fork. This arrange- 
ment seems to have left Father Badin freer to give more 
attention to the smaller and more remote Catholic set- 
tlements, isolated families, and whatever else demanded 
his care. 

The field of labor assigned to Father Salmon includ- 
ed Nelson County." In this way he came into contact 
with Master Richard Miles and his father. It is said 
that the amiable missionary soon won the hearts of his 
flock. Tradition also tells us that at times he said mass 
at the home of Nicholas Miles, that he had no truer ad- 
mirer than this staunch Catholic gentleman, and that 
he showed a particular interest in little Richard, whose 
piety possibly foreshadowed his future life. It is not 
improbable that the vocation of the future Father of the 

10 Father Salmon, Kentucky, to Bishop Carroll, Baltimore, May 27, 
1799 (Baltimore Archives, Case 8 B, G 5); Badin to same, February 20, 
1799) (ibid) Cusevli ale pe 

11 Father Badin to Bishop Carroll, October 9, 1799 (Baltimore Archives, 


Case 1, E 16), and February 20, 1799, as in the preceding note; SPALDING, 
Early Missions, pp. 74-81; Wess, op. cit., passim. 


GOESTIO,SAIND ROSE'S 59 


Church in Tennessee received its first impluse from this 
friendship. 

These fair prospects were short-lived. Death and 
other causes all too soon thinned the sacerdotal ranks— 
nay, left the people again with little spiritual succor 
and guidance. 'The first to fall a victim to his zeal was 
Father Salmon. He was thrown from his horse, while 
on his way to the station at Thomas Gwynn’s. He had 
not recovered from a spell of sickness contracted, says 
Spalding, from excessive labor and exposure. Perhaps 
the weak state of his health helped to make fatal the fall, 
from which he died at Mr. Gwynn’s the next day, No- 
vember 10, 1799. Father Salmon was the first priest 
to die in Kentucky.” The Gwynn home stood not far 
from that of Bishop Miles, who was then a boy nearly 
nine years of age. It has been handed down to us that 
he remembered the sad event well, and that he was 
wont frequently to speak of it in after life. 

Less than four years later, February 12, 1803, Fa- 
ther Fournier also passed to his eternal reward. He, 
too, was a victim of his zeal. His death, although oc- 
casioned by an accident in a saw mill, the state’s apostle 
says, “was chiefly caused by his excessive labours and 
long rides.” *° 

Conversion and ordination failed to take all the old 
leaven of Puritanism out of Father Thayer. This fact 
combined with other causes to make his ministrations 
unacceptable. Accordingly, he exercised the sacred 
functions in Kentucky for only about two years. Later 
he returned to the east, going thence to England, and 

12 SpatpinG, Early Missions, 77-78 ; WEBB, op. cit., pp. 138, 168-169. 
13 Father Badin to Bishop Carroll, April 11, 1803 (Baltimore Archives, 


Case A Special, L 12); Spatpinc, Early Missions, p. 75; WeEsB, op. cit., 
pp. 111-113. 


60 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


finally to Ireland, where he is said to have spent the last 
years of his life in the service of the poor in Limerick.* 

Thus was the stalwart Badin again left alone for 
more than two years in the pastoral care of Kentucky. 
His labors now became greater than they had ever been. 
The missions had grown in both size and number; the 
distances he had to travel were lengthened; the sick-calls 
were multiplied; there were more scattered Catholics re- 
mote from the districts oecupied by the faithful. The 
good priest’s cares had no end. One can form some 
idea of his toil when it is recalled that the places he was 
obliged to visit extended, from east to west, over a dis- 
tance of some one hundred and thirty or forty miles, 
and from north to south perhaps seventy miles. I*ew 
missionaries could have faced so much in such a soli- 
tary situation. From this point of view his life was 
truly heroic. 

Letters in the diocesan archives of Baltimore show 
that not only did the solitary pastor of Kentucky send 
urgent appeals to Bishop Carroll for spiritual assist- 
ance; the people themselves joined in the supplication. 
Money was forwarded to defray the expenses of travel 
for priests from the east to the west.” Rumors or prom- 
ises of aid often raised hopes that were soon disap- 
pointed. We can imagine the interest aroused in the 
bosoms of the backwoodsmen by a proposal to establish 

14 Spatpinc, Early Missions, pp. 78-81; Wess, op. cit., pp. 169-174. 
In his Life of Archbishop Carroll, pp. 420-427, Doctor Guilday gives 
some interesting biographical details of Father Thayer. He labored 
in many places, and the documents of that day show that he proved 
successful in none, unless it were in his charity work in Limerick, where 
he died in 1815. Prudence and judgment were not among his qualifi- 
cations. 


15 Father Badin’s voluminous correspondence in the Baltimore archives 
shows that he did not spare himself during this trying time, nor from 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 61 


a community of Franciscans in Scott County under the 
leadership of Father Michael Egan, afterwards the 
first bishop of Philadelphia. Surely the good people 
must have felt that finally God had heard their 
prayers.”® 

Hiventually, late in the summer of 1804, Father Ba- 
din received a visit from the Rev. Urban Guillet, su- 
perior of a band of Trappists who had been driven from 
France by the revolution, and were temporarily located 
at Pigeon Hills, not far from Gettysburg, Pennsyl- 
vania. Father Guillet’s purpose was to find a suitable 
home for his brethren in one of the Catholic settlements 
of Kentucky. The idea greatly pleased the state’s vet- 
eran missionary. Yet he felt that the presence of a com- 
munity whose life was wholly contemplative would 
rather offer him a place of occasional retreat than 
lighten his labors, or aid in distributing the bread of 
life to the starving Church of the west." 

Almost immediately after his arrival in Kentucky, 
Father Badin estimated the number of Catholic families 


1794 to 1797 when he was also alone. Besides, the same archives have 
a number of letters from the people appealing for priests. One of these 
is signed by one hundred and four men of the Cartwright’s Creek Settle- 
ment. It bears no date, but some one has written “1808” on it. This, how- 
ever, seems to be a mistake. It must have been written around 1803, and 
very likely led to the Dominicans settling there. In the last years of 
the eighteenth century some thirty-five or forty families, among them 
those of Joseph Fenwick and George Hamilton, his son-in-law, moved 
from Kentucky to the Spanish possessions in Missouri in order to be 
able to practise their religion. 

16 Badin to Carroll, December 6, 1804 (Baltimore Archives, Case A 
Special, L 10); American Catholic Historical Researches, IX, 75-76. 
~The documents also show that Father John Dubois, founder of Mount 
Saint Mary’s College, Einmitsburg, Maryland, and later the third bishop 
of New York, once thought of going to Kentucky. 

17 Badin to Carroll as in the preceding note; and same to same, 
September 7, 1804 (Baltimore Archives, Case A Special, L 11). 


62 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


in the state at some three hundred. By the time of 
which we speak these had increased a hundred fold, for 
in a letter to Bishop Carroll dated August 31, 1803, 
he states: ““Having made a new census of the different 
parishes, I find the number of Catholics amounts to up- 
wards of seven hundred families.’”**> Doubtless, how- 
ever, the wide territory over which the faithful were 
scattered, the many matters that demanded the time 
and attention of the lone priest, and other difficulties of 
the day rendered it impossible to make a complete cen- 
sus. 

Indeed, it is quite probable that the Catholic house- 
holds were considerably in excess of Father Badin’s es- 
timate. Very likely the number in 1803 was nearer that 
which he gives in another statement more than three 
years later. In a letter of March 14, 1807, he tells his 
ordinary that he has counted nine hundred and seventy- 
two families.” For nearly two decades those of the 
faith had flocked into Kentucky in ever increasing vol- 
ume, not merely from Maryland, but also from other 
parts of the country, and even from Ireland. 

Together with this letter of March 14, 1807, Father 
Badin sent Doctor Carroll a list of nineteen parishes 
or stations with churches or prospects of having them 
in the near future. Apart from their interest as a mat- 
ter of history, these places and their respective distances 
from Father Badin’s residence will give the reader a 
better idea of the forces that led the Dominicans to 
Kentucky, and serve as a further background for our 
narrative. 

1. Saint Stephen’s, then in Washington, but now 


18 Baltimore Archives, Case A Special, L 1. 
19 Jbid., Case 1, I 3. 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 63 


in Marion County. Mass was said in Father Badin’s 
house for the faithful. 

2. Holy Cross, in the Pottinger’s Creek Settlement, 
then also in Washington County, but now in Marion. 
It was five or six miles west of Saint Stephen’s.”° 

3. Saint Francis’, in Scott County, built in 1796 or 
1797, and seventy-two miles northeast.” 

4. Saint Ann’s, in the Cartwright’s Creek Settle- 
ment, Washington County, built in 1797 or 1798— 
about seven miles east. 

5. Saint Joseph’s, near Bardstown, Nelson County, 
which was built in 1797 and 1798—thirteen miles north. 

6. Holy Mary’s, in the Rolling Fork Settlement, 
in Washington County, but now in Marion and about 
five miles from the present Lebanon—thirteen miles 
southeast. The church there was under way. 

7; Saint Thomas’, in “Poplar Neck”, on the Beech 
Fork, Nelson County, eleven miles north. 

8. Saint Charles’, Washington County (now in 
Marion County), eight miles southeast. This church 
was built in 1806. 

9. Saint Michael’s, in the Cox’s Creek Settlement 
(now Fairfield), Nelson County, twenty-four miles to 

20 Washington County was cut out of Nelson County in 1792, the 
same year that Kentucky received the honor of statehood. Marion 
County was formed, in 1834, by a division of Washington County. 

21 In no other early Catholic settlement of Kentucky has religion fared 
so badly as in that of Scott County. From the beginning the parish 
gave its pastors trouble. It was the most favorably situated of them all 
from a worldly point of view, for the land was very fertile. Perhaps the 
people gave too much attention to their temporal welfare, making a god of 
mammon at the expense of their souls. It seems unfortunate that a 
number of the best families of the colony, including several Fenwicks 
who were leaders in church affairs, removed to Missouri. The parish 


has dwindled down to seven or eight families, of whom only about 
three can claim any connection with the original Catholic settlers. 


64 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the north. It seems that a log temple of prayer had 
been begun there, if it were not even in actual use. The 
reader will remember that this was the parish to which 
Nicholas Miles belonged.” 

10. Saint Clare’s, near the present Colesburg, in 
Hardin County—twenty-four miles to the northwest. 

11. Saint Benedict’s, Shelby County, thirty-five or 
forty miles north.” 

12. Saint Anthony’s, “near the forks of Rough 
Creek”, Breckinridge County—eighty miles to the west. 
It is now the parish known as Axtel. 

13. Saint Christopher’s, “near the Kentucky River’, 
Madison County—eighty miles east by north. 

14. Saint Louis’, in the present City of Louisville, 
which was more than fifty miles north. 

15. Saint Peter’s, in Lexington, seventy miles to 
the northeast. 

16. Saint Bernard’s, Adair County, thirty-four 
miles southeast. ‘he church for this congregation was 
subsequently built in Casey County, where now stands 
the village of Clementsville. 

17. Saint Patrick’s, Danville, Mercer County (now 
Boyle County )—thirty miles east. 

22For one reason or another, there was considerable trouble about 
building the little log church at this place, which caused it to be a long- 
drawn-out affair. 

23 Father Badin’s list and a letter from him to Bishop Carroll, sent 
from “St. Benedict’s, Shelby County, May 12, 1808” (Baltimore Archives, 
Case 1, I 7), show that this station was then in Shelby County. A 
communication to the United States Catholic Miscellany of December 
16, 1826, tells us that it was in the part of Shelby County taken (in 1824) 
to help in forming that of Spencer. The distance of Saint Benedict’s 
from Saint Stephen’s is given in Bishop Maes’ Life of Father Charles 
Nerinckx (p. 126) as thirty-three miles. But a letter of Father Badin 


to Bishop Carroll, October 5, 1805 (Baltimore Archives, Case 1, G 10) 
says it was about forty miles from his home. 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 65 


18. Saint John’s, Bullitt County, twenty-five or 
thirty miles northwest of Saint Stephen’s. The church 
there was in course of erection.” 

19. Springfield, Washington County, nine or ten 
miles to the east.” 

One would have expected to see Harrodsburg men- 
tioned in the above list. The nucleus of a Catholic col- 
ony gathered in that neighborhood, thirty-five or forty 
miles northeast of Father Badin’s home, at an early 
date. Although it never became numerous, still it 
would seem to have deserved notice. Possibly its omis- 
sion was an oversight. 

The spiritual desolation of the faithful in that dis- 
tant part of his diocese and Father Badin’s endless la- 
bors gave Bishop Carroll great anxiety. He had expe- 
rienced no little difficulty in finding priests ready to set- 
tle in the remote mission, or capable of sustaining its 
hardships and privations. It was but natural, there- 
fore, that he should turn his thoughts to the Dominicans 
from the English province, when Father Edward Dom- 

24Maes (op. cit., p. 127) makes Father Nerinckx say that place was 
only fifteen miles from Saint Stephen’s. But this is evidently a typo- 
graphical or other error. 

29 The church afterwards built by the Dominicans in Springfield was 
called Saint Dominic’s. Saint Rose’s, which was under way at the 
time Father Badin sent his list to Bishop Carroll (and about half way 
between that incipient town and Saint Ann’s—two miles from each), 
long delayed the necessity of a church in Springfield. The pretermis- 
sion of Saint Rose’s in the list is a surprise. 

This schedule of churches and stations by Father Badin is in the 
Baltimore Archives, Case C. Special, L. Maes’ Life of Nerinckx, pp. 126- 
127, with a few exceptions, was used for the distances of the various 
missions from Saint Stephen’s, as these are not given in Badin’s list. 
In addition to his list, Father Badin sent the Bishop a map of Kentucky 
drawn by himself, with the location of the churches, etc., indicated by the 
letters of the alphabet, and an accompanying explanation of their pros- 


pects. This document is also in Case C Special, L, of the Baltimore 
Archives. Saint Rose’s is given in this chart. 


6 


66 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


inic Fenwick proposed to make a foundation within his 
jurisdiction. Before Fenwick made his request, the 
bishop himself had urged Father William B. Short, the 
English provincial, “to embrace a fine opportunity 
which offered of obtaining a most advantageous settle- 
ment in the United States.” This was in 1802, if not 
earlier.*° Quite probably Baltimore’s prelate wished 
then to have them locate in Kentucky; for we know of 
no other place so sadly in need of priests at the time, 
nor one that seemed to proffer better opportunities 
for a body of religious men. 

Father Fenwick, who began the negotiations that 
happily resulted in the establishment of the Friars 
Preacher in the United States, was born in Saint Mary’s 
County, Maryland, in 1768. When a mere youth, he 
had been sent to Holy Cross College, conducted by the 
English Dominicans at Bornheim, Belgium. While 
there he learned to love the Order, and realized the 
good that it might effect for the Church in his native 
land. For this reason, he joined the Province of Eng- 
land with the express purpose of one day starting the 
institute of Saint Dominic in our youthful republic.” 

He received the Dominican habit at Bornheim on 

26 Bishop Carroll, Baltimore, to Rev. Richard Luke Concanen, O.P., 
Rome, November 21, 1806 (Archives of the Dominican Master General, 
Codex XIII, 731); O’Dantet, Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 114-115. 
Bishop Carroll states in his letter: “So long ago as 1802, I had urged 
Mr. Short, then the Provincial of it [the Order] in England, to embrace 
a fine opportunity which offered of obtaining a most advantageous settle- 
ment in the United States.” As Father Short’s term of office as provin- 
cial ended in 1798, it would seem that the bishop had written to him at 
an earlier date, but had forgotten the precise time. Father Short died 
in 1800. 

27 This fact has always been a tradition in Saint Joseph’s Province 


of Friars Preacher. Researches of late years have shown it to be stated 
in more than one document belonging even to Fenwick’s lifetime. 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 67 


September 4, 1788, and was raised to the priesthood 
early in 1793.°° In June, 1794, the community was 
obliged by the French revolutionists to seek refuge in 
England, where he spent the next ten years of his life. 
Although the college at Bornheim was re-opened on 
the restoration of peace, the uncertain and unhappy po- 
litical horizon of Continental Europe, together with the 
secularization by Pius VII of all religious in the coun- 
tries under French domination, not only prevented the 
educational institution from prospering again, but even 
rendered impossible the practice of the Order’s char- 
acteristic life. On the other hand, the strong anti-Cath- 
olic prejudices of Engand, which bore with special force 
against religious institutes, also gave a gloomy outlook 
for the future of the Friars Preacher in that country. 

These circumstances convinced the young American 
that the time had come for him to undertake the pur- 
pose for which he had entered the Order. They more- 
over induced three of his companions to offer their ser- 
vices in the pious enterprise—the Revs. Samuel Thomas 
Wilson, William Raymond Tuite, and Robert Anto- 
ninus Angier. Just when Fenwick first broached the 
subject to Bishop Carroll can not now be ascertained; 
but it is certain that the proposal was warmly espoused 
by the father of the American hierarchy. It received a 
similar approval from the Dominican Master General, 
the Most Rev. Pius J. Gaddi, to whom the project was 
made known by his assistant, Father Richard Luke Con- 
canen, later the first bishop of New York.” 

25 Book of Receptions and Professions (Archives of the English 
Province) ; records of the Cathedral of Saint-Bavon, Ghent, Belgium. 

29 The facts recorded in this and the preceding paragraph are shown 


by the correspondence given in chapters III, V, VI, VII, and VIII of the 
Life of Bishop Fenwick, and by the last part of the history of Holy 


68 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The first two letters that passed between Fenwick 
and Concanen on the matter are no longer extant; but 
those that still remain show that the correspondence be- 
gan as early as 1802.°° Another, addressed to Carroll 
and dated January 12, 1804, indicates that the bishop 
had been notified of the design prior to this latter date.” 
In the beginning, Father Thomas A. Underhill, then 
provincial in England, gave his ready consent that Fen- 
wick might return to his native land. However, when 
others began to enlist in the American enterprise, Un- 
derhill opposed the whole plan. Nor were his objec- 
tions without reason, for his province could not well 
afford to lose so many of its best men. The question 


was then referred to the General. He decided in 
favor of the New World.” 


Cross College, Bornheim, Belgium, in Father Raymund Palmer’s Life 
of Philip Thomas Howard, O.P., Cardinal of Norfolk. Writing from, 
Georgetown, District of Columbia, to Father Richard L. Concanen, 
Rome, October 14, 1805, Father Wilson says: “Ever since the notice I 
received from our Archbishop, Monsignor Roquelaure, that all religious 
in France, being now secularized by His Holiness, were entirely under 
his jurisdiction, I have turned my thoughts to America, where a new 
prospect opens of laboring with success” (Archives of the Dominican Gen- 
eral, Codex XIII, 731). Father Concanen, a friend of Bishop Carroll, 
and for a time his agent at Rome, took a keen and helpful interest in 
the establishment of the Friars Preacher in the United States. Since 
writing a sketch of Concanen, some years ago (Catholic Historical 
Review, January and April, 1916), we have discovered the date of his 
birth, He was born in the Diocese of Elphin, December 28, 1847 
(Diario dt Roma, May 11, 1808). 

30 A letter from Fenwick, Carshalton, England, to Concanen, Rome, 
March 15, 1803, shows that two previous letters had passed between 
them on the subject (Archives of the Dominican General, Codex XIII, 
Toa 

31 Baltimore Archives, Case 3, R 1. 

32 There were two Fathers Underhill in England, Thomas A., who 
was provincial at this time, and Gerard A., an elder brother. They 
frequently went under the alias of Plunkett. Fenwick began his com- 
munications with Rome through Father Gerard. The relations between 
Fenwick and the English provincial through all the controversy are truly 


GOES) PO DAINTAEROSES 69 


Fathers Fenwick and Angier reached Maryland late 
in November, 1804. ‘There they were joined by Wilson 
and Tuite nearly a year later. Before the arrival of 
any of these clerical forces, Bishop Carroll had _ ac- 
quainted Father Badin with their desire, and signified 
his intention of sending them to Kentucky. It was wel- 
come news to the lonely missionary.” Fenwick was a 
native of Maryland, the state from which by far the 
greater number of Catholics in Kentucky, or their par- 
ents, had come. Doubtless, therefore, Doctor Carroll 
felt that the American Friar Preacher and his English 
associates would understand the people better than 
priests with a foreign tongue, as well as be better un- 
derstood by them. One of the aims of the Dominicans 
was to establish a college for the education of youth, 
and the Church in the west had no Catholic schools for 
its children. This gave an additional reason for placing 
them in that part of the vast Diocese of Baltimore. 

Fenwick had confidently expected to set up the stand- 
ard of Saint Dominic on land inherited from his father 
in Maryland. However, he bowed to the solicitation 
of Bishop Carroll that he should visit Kentucky in the 
spring of 1805, in order to see if he could not find a 
suitable location there for himself and confreéres. Sat- 
isfied with the prospects offered by the new west, he 
returned to await Fathers Wilson and Tuite. He did 


edifying. See Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 62-63 and passim, 

33 Fenwick, Saint George’s, Maryland, to Carroll, Baltimore, November 
29, 1804 (Baltimore Archives, Case 3, R 3); Wilson, Georgetown, District 
of Columbia, to Concanen, Rome, October 14, 1805 (Archives of the 
Dominican General, Codex XIII, 731); Badin to Carroll, December 6, 
1804 (Baltimore Archives, Case A Special, L 10), and February 26, 
1805 (ibid., Case A Special, L. 9). For later relations between Father 
Badin and the Dominicans in Kentucky see Life of Bishop Fenwick, 
Chapter VIII, p. 127 ff, and Catholic Historical Review, April 1920 (VI, 
Poe andegoy f). 


70 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


not wish to come to a definite decision without the con- 
sent of his co-laborers.™ 

Whilst the leader of the little band of Friars Preacher 
was on this journey, Father Charles Nerinckx, of mis- 
sionary fame, started from Georgetown College for the 
same sphere of activity. He left at this particular junc- 
ture in order to accompany the Trappists of Pigeon 
Hills, who, under Father Guillet, were about to depart 
for Kentucky. However, the field was large, and gave 
promise of a good harvest; the labors many. Besides, 
the Trappist’s vocation largely witholds him from the 
ministry. For these reasons, a few weeks after their 
arrival at Baltimore (September 10, 1805), Fathers 
Wilson and Tuite were dispatched on to Kentucky. 
Because of the upsetting of their wagon on the western 
slopes of the Alleghany Mountains, from which both 
received wounds that retarded their progress, they did 
not reach their destination until late in December. 
Father Angier, at the request of Bishop Carroll, was 
left to labor temporarily on the missions of Maryland. 
Business connected with the settlement of his paternal 
estate detained Fenwick.” 

While waiting the arrival of the superior in Ken- 
tucky, Tuite resided at the house of Thomas Gwynn, 

34 Fenwick to Concanen (Rome) from Carshalton, England, March 15, 
1803, and Piscataway, Maryland, August 1, 1805 (Archives of the 
Dominican General, Codex XIII, 731; Carroll to same, November 21, 
1806 (ibid.) ; Fenwick to Carroll, Saint George’s, Maryland, November 
29, and Washington, December 15, 1804 (Baltimore Archives, Case 3, 
R 3 and 4). 

35 Life of Fenwick, passim. Not many years ago one used frequently 
to hear the old fathers tell how Father Wilson had an arm broken and 
Father Tuite received an ugly cut on his forehead when the horses ran 
away and overturned the wagon as they were descending the mountains. 


Bishop Miles, Father Nicholas D. Young, and Father Samuel L. Mont- 
gomery were given as the authorities for the statement. The tradition 


GOES TO7SAINT, ROSE'S 71 


where Father Salmon had died. Thence he attended 
the faithful in Nelson County. In this way, he became 
the temporary pastor of Nicholas Miles, whose resi- 
dence, it will be recalled, stood in the vicinity of the 
Gwynn station, and whose youngest son was destined to 
become one of the glories of the Friars Preacher in the 
United States. 

The great Wilson stopped at the home of one Henry 
Boone, an exemplary Catholic who lived in the neigh- 
borhood of Saint Ann’s. From there he looked after 
the Cartwright’s Creek Settlement, which had become 
perhaps the largest parish in the state. Almost simul- 
taneously he gathered around him a few boys who man- 
ifested a desire for the priesthood. ‘These he lodged 
with Boone and others, and began to teach them in one 
of his benefactor’s cabins.” 

This little makeshift of a school was the beginning 
of the first Catholic college west of the Alleghanies. 
Among its pupils were Robert and Nicholas Young, 
nephews of Father Fenwick, who went to Kentucky, 
probably with their preceptor, with the intention of 
joining the Order. Another was the subject of our nar- 
rative, Richard Miles. It has been handed down to us 
that he approached “good Father Tuite”, when that 
faithful priest took charge of the missions in Nelson 
still lives in the province and in Washington County, Kentucky. It is 
said that Wilson never fully recovered the use of his arm and that 
Tuite carried an ugly scar to the grave. Shea speaks of this mishap in 
his History of the Church in the United States, III, 274. 

36 Letters of Fathers Badin and Nerinckx substantiate the tradition 
of the province about Fathers Wilson and Tuite making their homes 
for a time with Messrs. Gwynn and Boone. Father Stephen Byrne speaks 
of it in his manuscript sketch of the province, as also does Shea (See 


preceding note). The tradition about both this and the school is still 
strong in the province and in the vicinity of Saint Rose’s. 


72 THE FATHER OF THE/CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


County, made known his wish to consecrate himself to 
God, and was sent at once to study under Father Wil- 
son.” 

Master Miles was near the close of his fifteenth year, 
or had just entered on the threshold of his sixteenth, 
when he came under the influence of the masterful mind 
of the Rev. Samuel 'T. Wilson, whom Bishop Spalding 
designates “one. of the most learned divines who ever 
emigrated to America.” ** Only a short time before, 
because of the lack of educational institutions in Ken- 
tucky, the youthful backwoodsman could hardly have 
aspired to so sublime a state. Doubtless, therefore, his 
unsullied heart thrilled with joy and gratitude because 
of the opportunity of realizing a vocation that pos- 
sessed his soul. Nor can we doubt that his parents 
gave him their blessing and sincerest encouragement 
when he left the parental roof, for they were pious 
people who could but see the hand of God in the favor 
shown their youngest child. 

Father Fenwick wound up his business in Maryland 
in June, 1805. Before the close of the next month, 
we find him again in Kentucky. Eager to set his pious 
enterprise on foot, he almost immediately purchased a 
large plantation from one John Waller, who is said 
to have been anxious to leave a locality in which so 
many Catholics had settled. The farm lay on Cart- 
wright’s Creek, in Washington County, about half way 
between Springfield and Saint Ann’s Church—some 

37 In times past the writer often listened to the older priests recounting 
how Father Nicholas Young and even Bishop Miles himself used to tell 
about the days they spent under Father Wilson at this school. There 
is no stronger or more reliable tradition in the province than that 


concerning the facts recorded in this paragraph. 
38 Early Missions, p. 154. 


GOES TO SAINT ROSE’S 73 


two miles from each—, and about eight miles east of 
Father Badin’s residence.®” 

There stood on the Waller land a two-storied brick 
house. ‘This was hurriedly remodeled. Fathers Wilson 
and Tuite, together with the students of the former, 
were then called to their new home, which was blessed 
and opened in December, 1806.*° It was dedicated to 
Saint Rose of Lima, America’s first flower of sanctity. 
Thus this modest little domicile, one of the earliest brick 
buildings erected in Kentucky, became not only the 
first Dominican priory, but even the first convent for 
men in the United States, with the possible exception of 
the temporary establishment of ‘Trappists, which was 
transplanted from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, and 
thence to Missouri and other places until they returned 
to Europe. ‘Today, therefore, save alone the Francis- 
can monastery at Santa Barbara, California, which was 
founded under Spanish domination, Saint Rose’s is 
the oldest convent of men in the country. Well may 
it be proud of such a distinction.” 

39In the Recorder’s Office, La Plata, Charles County, Maryland, 
are two deeds of Fenwick to Joseph Gardiner bearing the date of June 
5, 1806. Father Badin, writing to Bishop Carroll, September 17, 1806, 
says that Fenwick purchased the Waller plantation within three days 
after his return to Kentucky (Baltimore Archives, Case A Special, L 15). 
Perhaps one of the reasons for his haste was Father Badin’s unconquer- 
able proclivity to interfere in every sort of affair. 

40 Fenwick, Springfield, Kentucky, to Carroll Baltimore, March 1, 
1807 (Baltimore Archives, Case 3, R 8). Waller’s deed of his farm to 
Fenwick is dated December 1, 1806; but it would seem that the renova- 
tion of the Waller house was completed by this time. 

41 The Trappists came over from France in 1803 or 1804, and settled 
at Pigeon Hills, Pennsylvania. In 1805 they moved to Kentucky, loca- 
ting at the foot of Rohan’s Knob, near Holy Cross Church; but in the 
spring of 1807 they removed to Casey County. Thence, in 1809, they 


went farther west, stopping for a while near Cairo, Illinois, and finally 
settling at Florissant, Missouri. In 1810, they moved to Cahokia, Illinois, 


74 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


It was in this mother-priory of his native land that 

Richard Miles got his first real insight into the life of 
a Friar Preacher. From the start, tradition tells us, 
he showed fine Judgment, no mean talent, a spirit of 
tireless industry, and a fund of sensible piety. Father 
‘Tuite now became one of his teachers, with the result 
that a life-long friendship soon sprang up between the 
two men. Fenwick’s time, because superior, was mostly 
taken up with the ministry and the new buildings 
that he almost immediately got under way. However, 
the stay of the future apostle of Tennessee in the “Wal- 
ler mansion’, as the people called it, was of short dura- 
tion; but to tell of this change will be the burden of the 
next chapter. 
Eventually, in 1813, they left this place for the east, and after a short 
sojourn in New York City returned to France. It is admitted by all 
that they were a community of exemplary men, but they had the 
misfortune of being under an unpractical and capricious superior. 
The liberty with which they went from place to place indicates that none 
of their establishments had the canonical status of a convent. 

Saint Mary’s Coliege (now a Seminary) under the Sulpicians in 
Baltimore, Georgetown College and other houses of the Jesuit Fathers 
in the east, although communities, were not convents in the strict sense 
of the word. Father Matthew Carr, O.S.A., had built the Church of 
Saint Augustine and a rectory for his order in Philadelphia several 


years prior to the opening of Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky; but the Augus- 
tinian house does not seem to have become a convent until at a later date. 


CHAPTER IV 
DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 


FatHer Edward D. Fenwick’s original idea was to 
establish a house in Maryland that should be really an 
extension of the English Friars Preacher. He hoped, 
no doubt, that, with God’s favor, this place would in 
time become the mother of other similar institutions, 
and that eventually the way would be prepared for an 
independent province of his Order in his native coun- 
try. But the Master General, the Most Rev. Pius Jo- 
seph Gaddi, determined to take the proposed American 
convent under his own immediate jurisdiction. He so 
notified Fenwick through Father Concanen. ‘The rea- 
son for this decision was the well-known jealousy 
against British influence that existed in the United 
States at the time.’ 

On second thought, however, Father Gaddi resolved 
to found a separate and distinct province from the out- 
set, with Father Fenwick as its superior.” Behind the 
change of mind on the part of the Master General lay 
several factors. One was the slow and uncertain mail 
service, together with the distance from the seat of 
Christendom; another the dangers that encompassed the 
Holy See, and threatened a break of communications 
between Rome and the New World. Furthermore, 

1Concanen, Rome, to Fenwick, Carshalton, England, November 19, 
1803 (Archives of the English Province). 


2Concanen to Pius VII, November (?), 1804 (Copy in Archives of 
the Dominican General, Codex XIII, 731). 


75 


76 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Gaddi doubtless wished to see the religious in- 
stitute over which he presided take its place among the 
laborers for the glory of God, the spread of the Church, 
and the salvation of souls in our new and promising re- 
public, as it had done so nobly in Latin America. Un- 
der the existing circumstances, the surest way to this 
end was to place Fenwick’s enterprise on an autono- 
mous basis from the start. 

Indeed, the General’s zeal in the matter was such 
that it led to an incident that has few, if any, parallels 
in the long history of the Order of Friars Preacher, 
since the early years of its existence. ‘The law is most 
positive in its exaction that there must be at least three 
convents before a province can be established. In this 
instance, by virtue of apostolic authority of course, the 
erection of one was decreed even before it had a single 
house. Archbishop Carroll, by another extraordinary 
procedure, was empowered to found it and to deter- 
mine where it should set up its standard.” 

The documents to this effect arrived in Maryland 
early in October, 1805.4 Behind them one can clearly 
discern the kindly guiding hand of Father Richard L. 
Concanen, who espoused F’enwick’s cause from the be- 
ginning. Tor years the Irish assistant of the Domini- 
can Master General had unselfishly given much of his 
time and thought to the aid of the Church in missionary 
countries; but he seems to have had an especial love for 
that of the United States. The claims of the Catholics 

3 Father Gaddi might have awaited Bishop Carroll’s answer, and then, 
having obtained the beneplacitum apostolicum, erected what is known as 
a congregation. But he felt that, under the circumstances, the best 
thing to do was to proceed as recorded in the text. 


4 Fenwick, Zacchia, Maryland, to Carroll, October 10, 1805 (Baltimore 
Archives, Case 3, R 5). 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 77 


here appealed so strongly to his heart that only age 
prevented him from offering his services in their behalf. 
Through study, no less than through correspondence 
with Archbishop Carroll, whose friend and agent he 
was, he had become conversant with our needs, as well 
as knew the venerable patriarch’s longing desire for 
more zealous ambassadors of Christ. F’rom Fenwick he 
had learned that prelate’s wish to have the Friars 
Preacher come to his assistance.” 

F’ew clergymen in Rome were better known at the 
Propaganda than Doctor Concanen, or so completely 
possessed the confidence of its cardinals; for he had 
long been the medium used by many bishops under its 
jurisdiction in their dealings with that sacred congre- 
gation. For the same reason, he stood high in the es- 
teem of the Sixth and the Seventh Pius. At the pres- 
ent time the latter Pontiff was still in Paris, whither 
he had gone to crown Napoleon Bonaparte emperor of 
France. ‘I‘hence rumors floated back that combined 
‘with the uncertain state of Europe to render dangerous 
any further delay in stabilizing Fenwick’s project. 

Armed, therefore, with the approbation of Father 
Gaddi, and encouraged by his knowledge of the Prop- 
aganda’s anxiety to do all in its power for the Church 
in the young American republic, no less than by the 
well-known friendship between himself and Doctor Car- 
roll, Conecanen placed his request before that august 

° There are a number of letters of Concanen to Carroll in the Bal- 
timore Archives. Others from Carroll to Concanen exist in the Propa- 
ganda Archives and those of the Dominican Master General, Rome. It 
was the friendship between the two illustrious ecclesiastics that led to 
Concanen’s appointment as the first bishop of New York. See, on this 


subject, the Catholic Historical Review for January, 1916, (I, 400-421), 
and April, 1916 (II, 19-46, and 73-82). 


78 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


body of the Roman curia. His trust did not prove un- 
grounded. ‘The answer of the sacred congregation 
was in the form of a decree that authorized the bishop of 
Baltimore, as delegate apostolic, to create the proposed 
province of Friars Preacher in his vast diocese, if it 
met with his approbation. 

Father Gaddi himself entertained so firm a confidence 
in favorable action in the matter on the part of Bishop 
Carroll that, apparently. along with the document 
from the Propaganda, he had Concanen forward let- 
ters patent of the Order’s head appointing Fenwick 
superior of the future province, and naming it after his 
own patron, Saint Joseph. ‘True to the General’s ex- 
pectation, Doctor Carroll not only accepted the power 
conferred upon him, but even lost no time about put- 
ting it into execution. Moreover, he seems to have 
allowed Fenwick full liberty in the choice of a location 
for his purpose in Kentucky.° 


6 Decree of March 11, 1805. The date of this decree shows that it was 
enacted while Pius VII was in France; but it was held in abeyance 
until his return to Rome. He signed it on May 19, 1805. Cardinal 
Michael di Pietro and Archbishop Dominic Coppola, respectively the 
prefect and secretary of the Propaganda, affixed their signatures to the 
document on June 1, 1805. It seems certainly to have been forwarded 
to Baitimore at the same time that Father Gaddi’s letters, dated June 22, 
1805, were sent to Fenwick. 

Concanen had addressed a letter (in the name of Fenwick) to Pius 
VII late in November or early in December, 1804. The document is 
not dated; but on December 22, 1804, following its custom in such 
affairs, the prefect of the Propaganda wrote to Carroll in order to 
ascertain his will in the matter. Now, owing to the slow and doubtful 
mail service and the danger of further delay, the sacred congregation 
resorted to the decree mentioned in the text as the surest way of setting 
the business on its feet. Copies of all the documents relating to the affair 
(in Concanen’s own handwriting) are in the Archives of the Dominican 
Master General. See also the Catholic Historical Review as in the 
preceding note, and Life of Bishop Fenwick, chapters III and V. It 
is worthy of record that the Dominican Master General, out of gratitude 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 79 


It was with this authority that Father Fenwick pur- 
chased the Waller farm, renovated the little brick house 
that stood on it, and established the Convent of Saint 
Rose. Although, because of its remoteness from any 
large center of population, one would hardly pick out 
the same site today for a priory or college, it would have 
been difficult nearly a century and a quarter ago to se- 
lect in Kentucky a localty that gave greater promise 
for the realization of the Friar Preacher’s design. The 
future development of the country could not be even 
surmised, for the state was almost entirely given to ag- 
riculture. It had no cities, nor any towns whose pros- 
pects were assured, or where Catholicity had gained a 
firm footing. 'The plantation that he purchased lay al- 
most in the center of the Catholic settlements, while it 
was in the very heart of one of the largest and most 
prosperous of them. 

Moreover, the Waller land was good; the country 
round about it rolling, beautiful, picturesque; the clim- 
ate mild, equable, and healthy. Through the farm se- 
cured for the community flowed Cartwright’s Creek, 
which, though now of little service, then furnished an 
abundance of water-power for running, the greater 
part of the year, a grist and a saw mill that stood near 
the house. ‘These equipments, indeed, were almost in- 
dispensable aids for such an institution in the back- 
woods of that period.‘. While not trained in generosity, 
nor, as a rule, blessed with an abundance of the goods 
for Bishop Carroll’s friendliness in the matter, placed the noted Balti- 
more prelate in the list of the Order’s benefactor’s, and made him a 
participant in its prayers and good works in perpetuum. 

7 Fenwick’s letters show that he set much store on these mills, while 
tradition tells us that they long stood the community in good stead. 
It is not more than twenty-five years since the old-time waterpower 
flour mill was torn down, after proving a blessing to the community 


and neighborhood for nearly a century. Lack of water was the reason 
for its discontinuance. 


80 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of this world, the people were chivairous and hospita- 
ble. They could not be coerced, but they were singu- 
larly tractable under wise and kindly leadership. Firm 
in the faith, as well as true to its practices, it would 
have been hard to discover a better Catholic body. The 
same remains true to this day.” 

The diminutive convent proved too small from the 
start. Father Fenwick therefore began work at once 
on a larger and more substantial building of brick, three 
stories in height and some seventy-five feet in length 
by about thirty in width, that would serve not only as 
a priory and novitiate for the community, but also as a 
preparatory college for candidates of the Order. The 
site chosen for the new structure lay some four hundred 
yards west of the former Waller home. Possibly it 
was selected not less because of its beauty than because 
it was farther removed from the miasma and dampness 
which sometimes arose from the creek that ran hard by 
the first convent. 

Fenwick himself blessed and opened the new abode on 
March 19, 1807. It was a joyful occasion on which 
people of every creed gathered from near and far to 
witness the ceremonies.” Whilst plain in outline, the 
second Saint Rose’s, when completed, was one of the 
largest and most imposing edifices in the State of 
Kentucky. Fortunately it still stands on the crest of a 
little hill, a happy reminder of a past that is rich in 
traditions as well as full of inspiration.” 

8 These statements are borne out by every reliable authority. 

9 Fenwick, Lexington, Kentucky, to Concanen, Rome, July 10, 1808 
(Archives of the Dominican General, Codex XIII, 731). 

10 The building has been recently renovated, and strengthened by a 


broad, substantial porch of re-enforced cement, and the walls covered 
with an incasement of the same material. 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 81 


Perhaps not even the founder of the province and his 
confreres experienced greater joy at the opening of the 
new convent than did Tennessee’s future bishop. He 
must have regarded it as an augury of the realization 
of his heart’s holiest aspiration. At any rate, there he 
now took up his abode, and it remained his home for 
one and twenty years. 

No drones were tolerated in the youthful institution. 
Yet Richard Miles was not one whom the better and 
more commodious quarters would entice to waste his 
time. He needed not the spur of Father Wilson, for 
he had been brought up to a life of industry, while his 
thirst for an education and the hope of soon receiving 
the habit of Saint Dominic gave added zest to his stud- 
ies. ‘Tradition informs us that God blessed him with a 
ready, retentive memory as well as a good mind—an in- 
dispensable requisite for rapid progress. There can 
be no doubt that he was one of the six youths who, Fa- 
ther Fenwick writes to Father Concanen, July 10, 1808, 
“have made much progress in Latin, . . . are verbally 
received, and will be solemnly admitted to the habit 
and novitiate on St. Rose’s day, in August next.” ™ 

However, the leader of the enterprise seems to have 
counted too fast. Perhaps his wish to see this event, the 
first of its kind in the province he had just established, 
take place on the feast of the proto-convent’s patroness 
was father to the thought. Perhaps also it had been 
actually decided that the six postulants should be 
clothed with the habit on that day, but it was afterwards 
found to be more convenient or better that the recep- 
tion should be deferred until a later date. 





11 See note 9 above. 


7 


82 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Be that as it may, a change of authority over our 
youthful aspirant to the religious life and the priesthood 
should be noted here. Krom the beginning of his cor- 
respondence with Rome, Fenwick had strongly urged 
that his former professor, the Rev. Samuel 'T. Wilson, 
should be placed in charge of the American project. 
Although it was his conception, and the province was 
to be in his own country, Fenwick’s humility was such 
that it convinced him that he had not the ability suc- 
cessfully to carry out the plan. On the other hand, 
he had unlimited confidence in Wilson. With him at 
the head of affairs, he was sure all would go well; with- 
out him, he feared lest the attempt to found the pro- 
posed new province should prove a dismal failure. 

Because of these repeated solicitations, Father Fen- 
wick was not appointed provincial, but simply superior, 
in the Master General’s first official letters.” Yet the 
spirit of self-abnegation shown by the American Friar 
Preacher won the heart of the highest authority in his 
Order. Indeed, so tradition at least tells us, such was 
Father Gaddi’s confidence in his humble confrere that, 
when he finally decided to appoint a provincial, he sent 
two letters patent to Fenwick, one nominating him to 
the office, and the other conferring it upon Wilson. A 
personal letter that accompanied these two documents 
authorized him to choose for himself which one should 
be put into execution. 

Without hesitation, so the story runs, the meek son 
of Saint Dominic tore up the letters of his own appoint- 
ment, and handed to Father Wilson those that made 

12 Letters patent of Fenwick’s appointment, June 22, 1805 (Archives 
of Saint Rose’s Priory). In practically every letter of Fenwick to Con- 


canen Wilson’s name came up as the man who should be appointed 
superior. 








THE RIGHT REV. EDWARD D. FENWICK, O. P. 


FOUNDER OF THE PRIARS PREACHER IN THE UNITED STATES, 
AND THE FIRST BISHOP OF CINCINNATI 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 83 


him the head of the province. ‘These documents bore 
the date of February 27, 1807, but they did not reach 
Kentucky until Ocotober of the same year. The next 
day that for Wilson was read before the little commu- 
nity, and Fenwick gladly took his place in the ranks of 
his brethren, whilst his friend assumed the reins of 
authority.” 

Thus Father Wilson became the first provincial of 
religious men in the United States.“ Strange to say, 
and of course because of the incipient state of the 
enterprise, the same document made him also prior of 
the house. He was now Richard Miles’ superior in a 


13 Letters patent of Father Wilson’s appointment (Archives of Saint 
Rose’s Priory). The only extant letter of Fenwick to Concanen after 
Wilson’s appointment as provincial is that of July 10, 1808 (referred to 
in note 9 of this chapter). It gives the time of the arrival of Wilson’s. 
document, and tells us that it was read before the community the day 
after its reception; but it does not even allude to any appointment of 
himself to the office of provincial. However, this proves nothing, for such 
an omission was only in keeping with Fenwick’s spirit of humility. 

The tradition of the province on the matter is so definite, lively, and 
persistent that it demands a place in the history of the Friars Preacher 
in the United States. Nay, it is of such a character that it brings con- 
viction to one conversant with those early days. This tradition found 
expression in the sketch of Bishop Fenwick in the Catholic Telegraph 
(a paper founded by him), January 12, 1833, a few months after his death. 

14 The Jesuit Fathers in the colonies, prior to the unfortunate sup- 
pression of the Society, August 16, 1773, belonged to the English province, 
and were under a superior appointed from that country. From the time 
of the revival of the Society in the United States (1805), by virtue of 
a vivae vocis oraculum, and the affiliation of its members here with the 
Russian Province, the fathers were governed by a superior appointed 
from Russia. On August 7, 1814, the Society of Jesus was restored the 
world over. But the Jesuit mission of Maryland was not formally 
erected into a province until 1833, when Father William McSherry was 
appointed its first provincial. 

As early as 1797 a province of the Augustinians was established at 
Philadelphia, and Father Matthew Carr was appointed vicar provincial. 
But ‘t does not appear to have had a formal convent or a provincial 
unt’. after the date of Father Wilson’s appointment in Kentucky. 


84 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN: TENNESSEE 


double sense. Father W. R. Tuite became master of 
the postulants; while Father Robert A. Angier, who 
came from Maryland about the same time that the 
Master General’s letters arrived (possibly he took them 
with him from Baltimore), temporarily increased the 
staff of professors. Although the times were hard, 
Fenwick could with truth tell his friend, Father Con- 
canen, that the “young province” had so far succeeded 
“beyond all expectation’, and that every one was 
pleased and happy.” 

Perhaps none were happier than the subject of our 
narrative. Unfortunately, as Father Wilson was little 
given to writing letters, and the first superior, now that 
he no longer had charge of affairs, seldom engaged in 
such pastime, we have few documents that throw lght 
on the early religious life of the future bishop. With 
truth does Bishop Spalding say: “The Dominicans in 
Kentucky did much and wrote little.”** However, 
what with tradition and what with the scanty data that 
still remain, we can follow the young man’s course 
with a fair degree of certitude. 

The days ran smoothly along for him, though anx- 
ious in expectation of receiving the habit. Unfortun- 

15 Letter of July 10, 1808, as in note 9 of this chapter. Father 
Angier, who had been left in Maryland at Carroll’s request, reached 
Kentucky about October, 1807. By the close of 1808, or early in 1809, 
owing to another request of the bishop, he became resident pastor in 
Scott County, whence he attended other missions in the north and east. 
Father John C. Fenwick, S.T.Lr., an uncle of Father Edward D. 
Fenwick, had intended to join his brethren in Kentucky; but Bishop 
Carroll urged so strongly that he should remain in Maryland, where he 
had labored on the missions since about 1800, that he was left to con- 
tinue his toil there. He died at Saint Thomas’ Manor, Charles County, 
Maryland, August 20, 1815. See Life of Bishop Fenwick, passim, for 


both of these clergymen. 
16 Spatpinc, Early Missions, p. 149. 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 85 


ately, for the reasons given, the date of this important 
event in his life can not now be determined with pre- 
cision. In July, 1808, Fenwick wrote to Concanen that 
the thirtieth of the next month, the feast of Saint Rose, 
had been set for the clothing of six postulants. Others 
have stated that Bishop Miles was given the habit on 
October 10, 1808. Yet, in default of documents defi- 
nitely settling the question, the date of his religious pro- 
fession inclines us strongly to the belief that the cere- 
mony was deferred, and that it did not take place until 
1809—most likely late in April or early in May. What- 
ever the time it occurred, those who then donned the 
white frock and black mantle of the Friar Preacher were 
Richard Miles, Robert Young, William Willett, Step- 
en Montgomery, Samuel Montgomery, and Chris- 
topher Rudd. All six were native Americans. Wil- 
lett was born in Kentucky; the others, with the possible 
exception of Rudd, in Maryand. All, save Young, had 
been brought up in Kentucky.” 


17 Fenwick’s letter as in note 9 of this chapter; Suea, op. cit., 274-275. 
The Dominican noviceship is a twelvemonth; nor can it be prolonged 
beyond that period without grave reason. The profession of Miles 
and his companions could not have been deferred more than six months 
without permission from the Master General. There is no record or 
tradition of its having been delayed, nor any known cause why such 
action should have been taken. On the other hand, in the documents 
of the day there is clear evidence of an ardent desire to hasten matters 
as much as was compatible with efficiency. For these reasons, in the 
absence of any positive record or proof to the contrary, since they did 
not make their religious profession until May, 1810, it seems almost 
certain that they received the habit in April or early May, 1809. Shea 
says that Nicholas Dominic Young received the habit with Bishop Miles. 
But the fact that he did not make his profession until several months 
later, August 4, 1810, shows that this is an error. He was younger than 
the others, and there is a very distinct tradition in the province that 
Father N. D. Young’s clothing with the habit was deferred because of 
his age and health. 


86 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Before their investiture the postulants were subjected 
to a serious examination by the superior and his coun- 
cil. In addition to this, as is required by canon law and 
the Order’s constitutions, they were obliged to answer 
certain important questions regarding the motives that 
induced them to seek admission into the religious life. 
They were also required to give a solemn assurance 
that they had no duties or responsibilities that might 
require them to remain in ‘the world. The Order, for 
it never loses sight of the claim of parents, does not 
admit those whose services are indispensable at home. 
Even the youthful Province of Saint Joseph, great as 
was its need of subjects, faithfully adhered to this rule. 

Because of its place in the ecclesiastical annals of the 
west, if for no other reason, this event deserves a further 
word in our narrative. If it were the first time that 
such a ceremony was held in public in Kentucky, as it 
probably was, for the Trappists who had given the 
habit to novices at a prior date most likely did so in 
private, it must have aroused no little interest. ‘Tra- 
dition tells us that numbers went to witness it, and 
that many were disappointed because the chapel was too 
small to admit them. It is a pity that all could not be 
accommodated, for the investiture of a Friar Preacher, 
while brief and simple, is a beautiful and solemn rite 
that leaves a lasting memory, as well as makes a pro- 
found impression. Doubtless the parents of these six 
firstlings of the province, especially Nicholas and Ann 
Blackloe Miles, never forgot that occasion. 

When the time appointed for the ceremony came, the 
candidates entered the conventual choir, which then 
also served as a chapel for the people. At a signal 
given by the superior they prostrated themselves on 


DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 87 


the floor, their arms outstretched in the form of a cross. 
“What do you seek?” (Qwid quaeritis?), asked the su- 
perior. “God’s mercy and yours” (Misericordiam Dei 
et vestram ), replied the postulants. Then, at another 
signal, they arose, and knelt while they reverently lis- 
tened to the instruction of the prior. 

The prostration typified immolation of one’s self on 
the altar of humility and obedience. The intent of both 
question and answer was to signify to the youthful can- 
didates that, if they were to live the life of true religious, 
they should no longer seek self; that henceforth they 
should be subject to the will of their superior in all 
things not sinful. They were not to do the work of 
their own choice, but that which was assigned to them. 
They would have to live and labor, not where they 
pleased, but where they were sent. The provincial 
might send them anywhere within his jurisdiction; the 
Master General to the furthermost parts of the earth. 
All this was explained to them, together with the obli- 
gation they were about to assume of bearing patiently 
the onera and austerities imposed by the rule of Saint 
Dominic—a wise regulation, for the life of a Friar 
Preacher is not an easy one. In its entirety it is a 
life of prayer, sacrifice, and heroic labor for the salva- 
tion of souls. Of the mercy of God the applicants were 
assured, on condition that they proved faithful to the 
rule of the Order. 

At the close of his address, the superior asked: “Do 
you wish, by the grace of God, to undertake all this 
in the measure of your strength?” 'The six candidates 
answered in chorus: “I do.” Then the prior added 
the prayer: “May God complete that which He has 
begun.” And the community answered: “Amen.” 


88 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


While the strains of “Come, O Holy Ghost” (Veni 
Creator) rose heavenwards, Richard Miles and his five 
companions knelt in turn before the superior, laid aside 
their secular garb, and were clothed with the flowing 
tunic, the long scapular, and the capuche—all of snow 
whiteness. Over these was placed the black mantle to 
complete the Order’s habit. Then they prostrated 
themselves for the second time, while the prayers of the 
liturgy were recited to invoke God’s blessings upon 
them. When the signal was given, they arose and were 
sprinkled with holy water. ‘Then, while their brethren 
chanted the T’e Dewm, they received the kiss of peace 
from each member of the little community—a symbol 
of the new brotherhood in which they had been enrolled. 

All the above is formula whose significance is conse- 
crated by time and usage. It is sacrosanct rubric ren- 
dered more venerable by ages of custom. The circum- 
stances of time, place, and the incipient state of the com- 
munity must have made the affair all the more impres- 
sive and inspiring on that occasion. 

Father Wilson, of course, because both prior and 
provincial, officiated at the ceremony. Nor can one 
doubt that the fact of its being the first incident of its 
kind in the province combined with the charm and sig- 
nificance of the ceremony to inspire the learned divine 
to give one of those eloquent and exquisitely instructive 
discourses, traditions of which still live in central Ken- 
tucky. In years past one not infrequently heard echoes 
of this very event from those who knew of it through 
their parents or others who were present on the occa- 
sion. 

The investiture was preceded by a retreat of ten days, 
as required by the Order’s constitutions. No doubt, 





DONS THE HABIT OF SAINT DOMINIC 89 


again, Richard Miles made a review of his life to the 
guide of his soul in a general confession. This was in 
further preparation for the momentous step he was 
about to take. We may rest assured that the youthful 
aspirant’s tender conscience caused him to make ready 
for it with his whole heart. 

At baptism, by which we are received into the fold 
of the faithful, the Church requires us to take the name 
of some saint. The idea is to give us a model after 
whom we should pattern our lives, and a patron who will 
intercede for us in heaven. Similarly, in the Order of 
Saint Dominic, as in most other religious institutes, it is 
the custom, at the reception of the habit, to add the 
name of another saint to that by which one was known 
in the world. ‘This second patron then becomes the ex- 
emplar that should guide the religious in his efforts to 
attain perfection. Richard Miles took the name of Pius 
in religion, after the great Dominican Pope, Pius V, 
the last of the Sovereign Pontiffs to receive the honor of 
canonization.** 

Almost irresistible is the impulse to attempt a por- 
trayal of the impression made on one of the suscep- 
tible character of Nicholas Miles’ youngest child by the 
ceremony in which he took a conspicuous part in the 
backwoods of Kentucky more than a century ago. 
However, in view of the impossibility of doing justice 
to his sentiments, suffice it to say that it really marked 
the beginnings of the Order of Friars Preacher in the 

18 Samuel Montgomery, at the reception of the habit, became Brother 
Louis; William Willett Brother Thomas; Stephen Montgomery Brother 
Hyacinth; Christopher Rudd Brother Antoninus. Of Robert Young’s 
religious name there is no record; nor has it been handed down to us 
by tradition. For this reason, whenever his name occurs, we shall speak 


of him as Brother Robert. Possibly he took his baptismal name also 
in religion. 


90 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


United States; and that Brother Pius, for this was 
the name by which Richard now became known, fully 
realized the significance of the step he had taken. He 
resolved to become a worthy priest and a faithful mem- 
ber of the institute he had joined, one of whose bright- 
est ornaments is the great athlete of the faith (Saint 
Pius) after whom he took his name in religion. 
Through observance of rule, practice of virtue, and the 
spirit of obedience he became a model in the community, 
grew in divine wisdom, and gained favor with men no 


less than before God. 


CHAPTER V 
RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 


ALTHOUGH Father Fenwick’s humility prevented him 
from realizing the gifts with which nature had endowed 
him, the success of his work had so far surpassed per- 
haps his fondest hopes. He sowed with wisdom. ‘Thus, 
whilst the location and poverty of the mother-house, 
the later development of the country which ran north 
of Kentucky, and other circumtances rendered prog- 
ress necessarily slow, providence blessed his efforts 
in the quality, if not in the quantity, of the harvest. 
However, the richest legacies that he left his brethren 
at Saint Rose’s were holiness of life and the practice of 
every Christian and religious virtue. They must have 
exercised a vital force in the formation of Brother Pius’ 
character, for with him they were objects of personal 
observation. 

Fathers Fenwick and Wilson were men of one mind 
and one heart. The latter, too, was a man of God, 
who gave his all for the good of the Church and the 
salvation of souls. His position as prior and provin- 
cial, as well as his continuance at Saint Rose’s, brought 
him more in touch with Nashville’s future bishop. 
Closer still were Father Tuite’s relations with him, for 
his office of master of novices made him their immediate 
superior. His duty required that he give them every 
possible attention. That he trained so spiritual a man 
as the patriarch of Tennessee’s Church speaks well for 

91 


YZ THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


his piety. But tradition and a few scattered documents 
tell us that, owing to the paucity of priests, he was often 
obliged to spend Saturday and Sunday on the missions, 
and that on these occasions Father Wilson took his 
place in the novitiate.’ 

Father Angier had become a settled missionary in 
the northern part of the state before the first reception 
of postulants to the habit. Yet it is but reasonable 
to suppose that the good word of his apostolic labors 
had its part in cheering the subject of our narrative in 
the solitude of his noviceship, and in strengthening him 
in his vocation.” 

The part of the house allotted the novices was on the 
third floor. However, of Brother Pius’ novitiate there, 
or the twelve months that intervened between his recep- 
tion of the habit and his religious profession, but little 
is known. Even this little has come down to us more 
by tradition than in records. Yet through both these 
channels we know that the extreme want of the com- 
munity rendered its life harder than it would otherwise 
have been; that, even under such circumstances, the 
constitutions of the Order were rather too rigidly than 
too leniently carried out; and that only the brave and 
strong could hope to persevere. 

These hardships explain why by far the greater num- 
ber of those who entered the novitiate in the early days 
did not remain to take the vows. For instance, Chris- 
topher Rudd, Brother Antoninus, who received the 

1]t is evidently this fact that explains why one sees Father Wilson 
noted now and then as novice-master, in addition to his other offices. 

2 The sending of Father Angier to labor on the missions in northern 
Kentucky involved a heavy loss for Saint Thomas’ College, then about 


ready to be started. It was done at the request of Bishop Carroll, 
although the sacrifice of him greatly crippled the teaching faculty. 


RELIGIOUS“PROFPESSION: STUDENT, PROFESSOR 93 


habit with Bishop Miles, though a deeply religious 
man, found the life more than his strength could stand. 
He is said to have completed his education in the col- 
lege. Later he became a physician and a citizen who 
yielded to none in the popularity he gained in Wash- 
ington County, or in the influence for good that he 
wielded among its people. In after life he retained 
the name of Antoninus which he received in religion, 
in addition to that of Christopher given him at baptism. 
For four years he was the state senator from his dis- 
trict, and for three its congressman.° 

Similarly, Nicholas Young, who took the name of 
Dominic in religion, was the only one of several who 
are said to have received the habit with him about the 
first days of August, 1809, to remain for profession. 
Indeed, afterwards it became necessary to modify con- 
siderably the austerities of the life led at the institu- 
tion in order to temper it even to the hardy sons of the 
Kentucky pioneers. Despite the modification, those 
who were later sent abroad to complete their studies, as 
well as those who came to the province, after having 
made their novitiate in Kurope, found religious life 
there much easier than in the backwoods of the west.* 

3 Wess, op. cit., p. 79: CoLitins, History of Kentucky, II, 749. Webb 
speaks of Doctor Rudd having been educated at Saint Thomas’ College, 
but does not mention that he was in the novitiate. Some are averse, 
without cause, to telling such things. Father Byrne’s manuscript sketch 
of the province and tradition, however, leave no doubt about the fact. 
Doctor Rudd’s memory is still cherished in Washington County, and no 
one hesitates to state that he once wore the Dominican habit. 

4A letter of Father Wilson to the Rev. John A. Hill (Rome), dated 
March 16, 1818, and one of the same Father Hill, from Saint Rose’s, 
in Kentucky, November 21, 1821, to some friend in England, give a very 
clear idea of the trials and privations of the little community. Wiailson’s 


letter (extracts in an Italian translation) is in the Propaganda Archives, 
America Centrale, Vol. IV, No. 138; Hill’s is published in the London 


94 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The same tradition tells us again that none bore 
these trials and hardships more bravely than did 
Brother Pius Miles. A true son of Saint Dominic, he 
was joyous under them. Nay, so it is said, he was 
wont in after years to speak of his novitiate as the hap- 
piest period of his hfe. ‘There was nothing gloomy or 
morose in his nature. Doubtless this buoyant disposi- 
tion combined with the grace of God to sustain the 
youthful candidate in whatever temptation may have 
crossed his path. 

Nothing daunted by trials and privations, Brother 
Pius advanced in virtue as well as made ready for his 
religious profession. This pivotal event in his life took 
place on May 13, 1810.° It was of a Sunday, chosen 
no doubt that the people of the neighborhood might 


Catholic Miscellany, I, 327-328. However, neither document details the 
hardships by any means so fully as does tradition. 

5 For the precise date of the profession of Brother Pius and his 
companions (Samuel and Stephen Montgomery, Thomas Willett, and 
Robert Young) we have had to depend on the Analecta Sacri Ordins 
Praedicatorun for January, 1900 (IV, 440). There used to be at 
Saint Rose’s three or four small books, some ten inches long by eight 
wide and one thick, with mass, church, community, and miscellaneous 
records down to about 1830. The writer often had them in his hands. 
Unfortunately, some years ago, they found their way into a bonfire 
during one of those spasmodic and careless house-cleanings by which 
so much priceless material for history has been destroyed. Most likely 
the then editor of the Analecta got the date of these professions from 
these books, through the medium of some friend, before their destruction ; 
for we know of no other source from which he might have obtained his 
information. Father Samuel L. Montgomery, one of the five, says in 
a letter that he made his profession in May, 1810, but he does not give 
the day of the month. 

The Analecta does not mention the profession of Brother Robert 
Young. This omission was probably either because the editor wished 
to give the names of only those who became priests; or because the 
one from whom he got his data, under the impression that he wanted 
only those who attained the priesthood, did not copy the name of Robert 
Young in the list which he sent. We will refer to Brother Robert again 
later in this chapter. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 95 


the more easily witness a spectacle the like of which 
few, if any, of them had ever seen. It was perhaps the 
first public affair of the kind no less in the west than 
in the new province of Friars Preacher; for the Trap- 
pists who had professed two or three novices at an 
earlier date seem to have done it in private. The day 
selected for the occasion confirms the old tradition that 
Saint Rose’s Church, but lately dedicated, was filled by 
the crowd that came for the ceremony, and that it 
long formed a frequent topic of conversation among 
the Catholics in that part of the state. Doubtless 
Brother Pius’ parents and relations were among the 
number.® 

At the same time, the Catholics of New York City 
were in anxious expectation of the arrival of their first 
bishop, the Right Rev. Richard L. Concanen, O.P. 
Father Fenwick, at the instruction of the provincial, 
journeyed to the east in order to welcome the friend 
and patron of Saint Rose’s. No doubt he delayed his 
departure from Kentucky on account of the profession 
of Brothers Pius Miles, Thomas Willett, Samuel Mont- 
gomery, Stephen Montgomery, and Robert Young on 
May 138, 1810, and that of Brother Dominic Young on 
the fourth of the following August.’ The two Youngs, 

6In bygone days the author often heard old people of Saint Rose’s 
and neighboring parishes speak of this profession. His own maternal 
grandmother, Mrs. Lucy (Edelen) Hamilton, a woman of fine mind 
and extraordinary memory, was present at the ceremony. She was a 
girl ten years of age at the time. 

7The Analecta (see preceding note) gives August 4, 1811, as the date 
of Father Nicholas Dominic Young’s profession. This is evidently a 
typographical or other error. Both tradition and the ordo of the 
province give August 4, 1810, as the date of the event. Besides, Bishop 
Spalding’s Life of Bishop Flaget (page 69) shows that Father Young 
(then a novice) was in Maryland in 1811, and met Flaget at Pittsburgh 
in June of that year. He had certainly made his profession prior to that 


date; for he could not have left Saint Rose’s for such a journey during 
his simple novitiate, without breaking it and having to make it anew. 


96 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


it will be remembered, were his nephews. He seems 
to have started for New York immediately after the 
latter event.” Naturally he was anxious to witness the 
first religious professions in a branch of his Order that 
he had lately established, and all the more so because 
two of his own family were thus to bind themselves to 
God. 

Nothing could be simpler, nor yet more sublime in 
its significance, than the profession of a Friar Preacher. 
As a modern writer beautifully expresses it: 

- The ceremonial on this occasion has always been simple in the 
extreme. The absence of all external splendour sets in clear light 
the superhuman beauty and the profound signification of what is 
taking place. Great sacrifices call for no display, still less for 
any long and formal ceremonies. Here is simply a man who is 
giving himself to God, wholly, unreservedly, until death. And 
he does so in a few brief words shorn of all rhetoric; yet no one 
who retains any sense of supramundane realities can fail to be 
stirred to the depths of his soul when he witnesses such a scene. 

With his hands laid between those of the Prior, and resting on 
the book of Constitutions, kneeling like some vassal of old before 


his suzerain, the novice pronounces in a loud voice the formula 


which is to decide his life forever.? 


In 1857, Pius IX enacted a law by which the mem- 
bers of religious orders were required to take, at first, 
only simply perpetual vows. ‘These were to be fol- 
lowed by solemn vows three years later, unless a dis- 
pensation should intervene. Today, by virtue of 
the new code of canon law, religious must first take 
temporary vows for three years, and then the solemn. 
In the olden times solemn vows were taken from the 

8 Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 173-174. 

9 Jacguin, Le Frére Précheur Autrefois et Aujourdhu, p. 168 (Father 


Hugh Pope’s translation under the title of The Friar Preacher Yester- 
day and To-day, p. 140). 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 97 


start, and the greater number of theologians held that 
they constituted an engagement from which not even 
the Sovereign Pontiff could grant a dispensation.”® 

Brother Pius Miles and his four companions made 
their profession under the old law. With one heroic 
act they cut themselves away from the world, and 
bound themselves irrevocably to the service of God in 
the life of a Friar Preacher. This was precisely what 
Brother Pius wanted. ‘The valiant soldier of Christ 
wished to be linked with the Blessed Master by bonds 
that could not be easily severed. We may rest assured, 
therefore, that, during the ten days’ retreat which pre- 
ceded it, he prepared for the joyful event with his whole 
heart and soul. 

It is of such a ceremony that Father Jacquin speaks 
in his Le Frére Précheur Autrefois et Aujourdhui. 
The copy of the formula of profession which Brother 
Pius made for himself, and used at that time, no longer 
exists. In default of it, we take that which is found 
in the constitutions, and, by filling in the names suited 
to the occasion, give an English translation of the words 
by which he bound himself to the way of perfection on 
that memorable day of his life. 

I, Brother Richard Pius Miles, make my religious profession, 
and promise obedience to God, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to 
our Holy Father Saint Dominic, and to you, Very Rev. Samuel 
Thomas Wilson, Prior Provincial of this Province of Saint Joseph, 
acting in the place of the Most Rev. Pius Joseph Gaddi, Master 
General of the Order of Friars Preacher, and his successors, ac- 
cording to the Rule of Saint Augustine and the Constitutions of 


10 We speak here of religious orders in the strict canonical sense 
of the term, not of religious congregations. The Society of Jesus also 
formed an exception to the rule of Pius IX, for its members do not 
make solemn vows until some years after they have taken the simple. 


8 


98 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the Friars Preacher. To you and to your successors I promise obe- 
dience until death. 
Brother Richard Pius Miles, of the Order of Preachers.1 


Solemn words these, clear, vigorous, to the point—ex- 
pressive of a heroic and complete sacrifice of one’s self 
to God. They were typical of him who thus immolated 
himself on the altar of divine love that thirteenth day 
of May, 1810. Well had he pondered over them; 
thoroughly did he understand their meaning. ‘They 
gave him a picture of his future life. It was a picture 
that pleased him, despite the sacrifice involved, for in it 
was shown the narrow but sure path that leads to God 
and eternal happiness with Him in heaven. 

First of all, he pledged obedience to God, for in obey- 
ing he would submit his will to that of the Creator 
rather than to that of man. He promised obedience to 
the Blessed Virgin, which reminded him that the Queen 
of Heaven is the patroness and protectrix of the 
Order, to whom its members owe a special filial devo- 
tion. No mention was made of the visible head of the 
Church; but Brother Pius knew well, as do all his breth- 
ren, that the entire institute is under the Pope, and 
must render obedience to him as the Vicar of Christ 
on earth. The young Friar Preacher also promised 
obedience to Saint Dominic. This told him that the 
founder of the Order, next to the Divine Master, was 
the ideal after which he should strive to model his life 
as a religious. 

It will be noticed that Brother Pius made his pro- 
fession to Father Wilson, the local superior or provin- 
cial, acting not in his own name, but in that of the Mas- 
ter General. ‘This fact merely showed him wherein lie 


11 Constitutiones Fratrum S. Ordinis Praedicatorum, Paris, 1886, pp. 
151-152 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 99 


the supreme authority and principle of unity in the 
Order. It did not free our American cleric from the 
obligation of full and unqualified obedience to any and 
every superior under whom he might be placed. In- 
deed, addressing Father Wilson in the last sentence 
of his profession, he said: “To you and to your succes- 
sors I promise obedience until death.” 

The norm of the obedience that he was to render he 
saw Clearly specified in the words “according to the 
Rule of Saint Augustine and the Constitutions of the 
Friars Preacher.” But we must not forget that he 
obliged himself to follow these in addition to the laws of 
the Church and the Catholic code of morality, which 
teach submission to every legitimate authority as coming 
from God. 

Thus, the reader can hardly have failed to remark, 
obedience is the keynote to the profession of the youth- 
ful Friar Preacher. Indeed, it is pivotal in every order. 
Without it no religious institute could long survive. 
It is expressly to. emphasize this important truth 
that in the Order of Saint Dominic the vows of poverty 
and chastity are not mentioned in the formula of pro- 
fession. ‘They are contained in that of obedience as 
beauty and sweetness in the rose. 

Not content with the observance of the general com- 
mandment of our Lord: “Render therefore to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that 
are God’s’, Brother Pius was anxious to bind himself 
to follow even the divine counsels. His wish to be per- 
fect impelled him to the religious state, for he knew 
that such a life would oblige him to strive after perfec- 
tion.” 


12 The religious life is rightly called a state of perfection, because he 


100 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


In the instructions on the aims and purposes of the 
Order that he received during his novitiate he learned 
that he must labor for something more than his own 
personal sanctification; that Saint Dominic established 
his institute expressly for the salvation of souls; that the 
vocation of every Friar Preacher, therefore, requires 
him to keep this idea ever uppermost in his mind; and 
that the specific means by which he is to carry out the 
chivalrous Spaniard’s dominant design in the founda- 
tion of his institute are preaching and teaching the word 
of God.” In fact, all a Dominican’s studies, the obser- 
vance of his rule, and everything else must subserve the 
prime object of his Order, which is the salvation of souls. 
This idea the subject of our sketch never lost sight of, 
whether as a scholastic, priest, or bishop. 

A Friar Preacher’s higher course of studies (that is, 
philosophy, theology, and the accompanying branches) 
begins after his profession, unless he has made them, 
in part at least, prior to entering the Order. He is 
supposed to have completed the classics before he re- 
ceives the habit. The novitiate proper should be given 
wholly to his spiritual formation. But those days of 
stress, when priests were few and the calls for laborers 
as well many as urgent, necessitated a partial dispen- 
sation from the rigid law. Yet the superiors were care- 
ful that the mitigation involved no serious interference 
with the routine of novitiate life. 
who embraces it obliges himself to aim at perfection. It is no sin 
for a religious not to be perfect; but it is a sin for him not to desire 
or aim at perfection. 

13 The first Declaratio in the prologue of the constitutions states em- 
phatically that the Order was specially founded for the salvation of 


souls, and that the specific means for the attainment of this end are 
preaching and teaching the word of God. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 101 


There can be no doubt that Brother Pius applied 
himself to the classics between the time of his reception 
and that of his profession, and little doubt but that he 
had become proficient in Latin when he took his vows. 
In the olden days ecclesiastical students were diligently 
drilled in that language. It is this that explains how 
they mastered it so quickly. Some of the early fathers 
educated at Saint Rose’s were excellent Latin scholars. 
We recall, for instance, the Rev. Joseph T. Jarboe, 
who, it is said, could quote both the prose and poetry 
of the ancient Romans by the hour.” 

Tradition tells us that Bishop Miles was also a good 
Latinist. Nor is its truth to be doubted, for his teach- 
ers, Fathers Wilson, Angier, and Tuite, were men of 
ability and education as well as trained in the art of 
pedagogy. It would be interesting to know just how 
they first taught Brother Pius and those who began 
their novitiate with him. Works on the classics could 
hardly have been found in Kentucky at that time, and 
these proto-Catholic professors brought few books with 
them. Possibly, until this defect could be remedied, 
they used a system akin to the modern Berlitz method 
of languages, than which perhaps no other gives such 
satisfactory progress in beginners. ‘There is something 
of a tradition in the province to that effect. KF urther- 
more, it tells us that they supplemented this manner 
of instruction with written lessons which they required 


the students to learn by heart; and that the results were 
splendid.” 


14 Father Jarboe could repeat the classics with marvellous facility 
even after he had attained the age of eighty years. 

15 Tradition tells us that Father Wilson wrote a Latin grammar and also 
an entire course of theology adapted to the needs of England and the 
United States. But shortly before his death the collection of manuscript 


102 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Be this as it may, Brother Pius began the study of 
philosophy soon, if not immediately, after his religious 
profession; for he had made four years in the classics 
prior to that time—no mean course, if we consider the 
day and the special attention then paid to Latin. 
Theology followed philosophy in due order. ‘These 
two sciences were, of course, accompanied by the study 
of other branches of learning, such as Scripture, history, 
and polemics, the last of which was then much in vogue. 
In all did he give satisfaction to his superiors. In 
Father Wilson, we should not forget, he had the ad- 
vantage of studying under one of the most learned 
scholars, and perhaps the best philosopher and theolo- 
gian, then in the United States. 

Although he is not usually given this credit, the fu- 
ture prelate numbered among his gifts an artistic taste 
and no mean talent for music. Fortunately, in spite 
of his busy life, he was able to develop them under the 
guidance of F’ather Tuite. There had long been a tra- 
dition about these two men having decorated the par- 
lors of the second Convent of Saint Rose. And five or 
six years ago, when the plaster was removed from this 
part of the structure in the course of its renovation, the 
brick walls were found to be covered with graceful fes- 
toons and other ornaments in water-colors. Hardly 
does it seem probable that there was any one else in 
Kentucky at the time capable of such artistic work."® 
disappeared. It is thought that he himself, through an exaggerated spirit 
of humility, committed these compositions to the flames. Possibly he 
had even other writings which he destroyed in the same way. Spalding’s 
Early Missions (p. 154) speaks of the tradition as regards the course 
of theology. 


16 Tradition has it that they also decorated the first Saint Rose’s 
Church. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 103 


As a musician, indeed, Brother Pius was considered 
a prodigy in the backwoods of the west. His talent 
along this line not only brought him into prominence 
among the people, but also proved a valuable asset for 
the college and church at a time when it was not easy 
to procure persons with musical attainments except on 
the Atlantic seaboard, or in the former Spanish and 
French settlements beyond the Mississippi River. 
Even after his ordination he retained charge of the 
parish choir, and presided at the organ for at least one 
episcopal consecration.” 

Father Wilson, in a letter to the Rev. John Augus- 
tine Hill, O.P., tells us that the early students at Saint 
Rose’s were taught French and Italian, in addition to 
the courses ordinarily given in seminaries.’* Bishop 
Miles is said to have had a good knowledge of both these 
languages, a rather extraordinary acquisition for an 
American at that time who had been entirely educated 
at home. More than likely he taught these branches 
in Saint Thomas’ College while a professor in that in- 
stitution. 

From the outset, it will be recalled, the founders of 
Saint Joseph’s Province of Dominicans had intended 
to establish, in connection with their convent, a college 
for the education of secular youth. Accordingly, prep- 
arations for the erection of a church and still another 
building for educational purposes were got under way 
even before they took possession of the new priory. 

17 Webb speaks of Bishop Miles’ musical talent in his Centenary of 
Catholicity, pp. 207 and 211. A contributor (from Paducah, Kentucky,) 
to the Catholic Advocate of April 24, 1847, speaks of how he learned 
music under Father Miles. The contributor seems to have attended 
Saint Thomas’ College in the twenties of the nineteenth century. 

18 See note 4 of this chapter. Father Hill had lately entered the 


Order in Rome for the American province, and was making his studies 
there. 


104 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Great quantities of brick were burned for these struc- 
tures in 1807; since, with an eye to the future, it was 
determined to make them large enough to meet all 
demands for years to come.” 

However, the realities could not keep pace with the 
zeal of these pioneer builders. Father Fenwick’s patri- 
mony had been exhausted by what had already been 
accomplished; financial depression bore heavily on the 
country; the people, although both Catholics and non- 
Catholics had hitherto contributed generously of their 
brawn and time in the enterprise, were not able to ful- 
fill their promises of money. It would seem, in fact, 
that, discouraged by hardships or even the difficulty of 
making ends meet in the necessaries of life, they now 
became disheartened, largely lost interest in the educa- 
tion of their children, and no longer showed the same 
readiness to give the little community the aid of their 
muscles in the erection of the proposed church and 
college. 

In this way, the two structures rose much more slowly 
than had been expected. Because of the untoward cir- 
cumstances, the postulants, novices, and professed cler- 
ics were obliged to measure their strength, between 
classes and religious exercises, with that of colored ser- 
vant, hired man, and sturdy farmer in making brick, 
lime, mortar or plaster, felling trees, sawing and haul- 
ing lumber, rearing walls, or whatever work was nec- 
essary for the common good.*® This toil was their rec- 


19 Father Fenwick, Lexington, Kentucky, to Father Concanen, Rome, 
July 10, 1808 (Archives of the Dominican General, Codex XIII, 731). 
20 The reader need hardly be told that negro slavery prevailed in all 
“the southern states at this time, and that every white man with means 
had his slaves. Institutions formed no exception to the rule. Indeed, 
fortunate was considered the lot of a colored person who belonged to a 
Catholic clergyman or institution, for in such hands he was sure to 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 105 


reation. ‘They had little other diversion. Their lives 
were a succession of periods at prayer, study, and man- 
ual labor. 

The priests themselves were not above taking part 
in such menial toil and good-natured rivalry. It has 
been handed down to us that Father Wilson, a stockily, 
well-built Englishman, could hold his own in lifting 
with the strongest of the laborers. Learned divine and 
provincial though he was, he spent many of his spare 
moments in this way, for it was useful to the commu- 
nity, as well as gave him the physical exercise necessary 
for health. Father ‘Tuite, cast in a more delicate mold, 
could not perform the heaviest toil; yet he did whatever 
he could, and his time permitted. 

Father Fenwick, weak but wiry, busied himself 
without surcease at every sort of occupation. He was 
both missioner and syndic. On his return from a mis- 
sionary tour, he would take a rapid survey of what had 
been accomplished, and then join in the work himself. 
Before leaving on another journey in quest of souls 
to be saved, he mapped out what he wished to be done 
during his absence. His zeal and restless activity left 
him little repose. 

Brother Pius Miles did his part bravely. Even 
after he became a member of our American hierarchy, 
he used frequently to speak of how his face was 
browned by exposure, while his hands were blistered 
and callous from manual toil in his student days and 
early priesthood. Apparently, perhaps with a view of 
encouraging them in their lighter trials, he loved to 
recount these experiences before the younger men of 


receive not only humane treatment, but also due consideration for his 
soul, 


106 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the province in which he had been a distinguished 
leader.”* 

Such things may appear almost insupportable to 
many of our readers. Possibly they would be for our 
generation, accustomed as we are to every manner of 
luxury. Yet we must remember that life in the past 
was vastly different from what it is at present. It was 
harder in every way, although it had its counter- 
balance of a free-heartedness and contentment to which 
we are almost strangers. Besides, some of the trials 
that have been detailed were imposed by a necessity 
that knew no law. 

In the mind of the serious student of history, even 
though he be glad that he escaped them, there can be 
small doubt that such hardships conduce to formation 
of character. ‘They had not a little to do in the making 
of the grand personages of bygone days, the perusal of 
whose noble lives affords no less delightful than instruc- 
tive pastime. ‘Trial and privation have their advantages 
as well as their disadvantages. Few men have ever 
amounted to much without having passed through them. 
In the story of the first bishop of Tennessee they are 
as a flavor, give it the additional charm of sympathy, 

21 There is no tradition in the Province of Saint Joseph more definite 
or more persistent than that about the manual toil of its early 
members in the construction of Saint Rose’s Church and Saint Thomas’ 
College, and even in the fields. We have a very distinct recollection 
of hearing the following priests tell how Bishop Miles had edified 
them with recitals of his early experiences along these lines—the 
Revs. Sydney A. Clarkson, James V. Edelen, Osman A. Walker, John 
A. Bokel, Constantine L. Egan, Michael D. Lilly, John H. Lynch, John 
B. McGovern, Denis J. Meagher, Jeremiah P. Turner, Dominic H. Noon, 
John A. Rochford, and Joseph H. Slinger. The old lay brothers were 
wont to tell the same story, and also the old sisters at Saint Catherine’s, 


near Springfield, Kentucky, and at Saint Mary’s of the Springs, Col- 
umbus, Ohio. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 107 


and show what manner of man he was, just as they 
had their part in preparing him for the hard labor 
that God had in store for him. It speaks well for him 
and his confreres that we find no word of complaint 
from them, however oppressive their toil or adverse 
their circumstances. ‘They always wrote kindly of the 
people, and praised their good-will, but never criticised 
them for their lack of support. 

Because of the many drawbacks, Saint Rose’s Church 
was not completed until late in 1809, although it had 
most likely been in use before that time. Its dedica- 
tion took place on the feast of Christmas, which fell 
that year on Monday. ‘Thus the occasion was a two- 
fold source of joy for the parish and community. It 
is worthy of note that it was the first brick Catholic 
church finished west of the Alleghany Mountains; and 
that, albeit far from sumptuous, it was for some years 
considered one of the finest temples of divine worship 
in the country.” 

Events of note now began to succeed one another 
with greater rapidity in Kentucky. On November 4, 
1810, the Right Rev. Benedict J. Flaget, who had been 
appointed bishop of Bardstown in April, 1808, was 
consecrated in Baltimore by Archbishop Carroll. He 
arrived at Father Badin’s residence, where he was to 
make his home temporarily, in June, 1811. ‘There the 
fathers of Saint Rose’s formed a part of the committee 

22 Rev. S. T. Badin to Archbishop Carroll, February 5, 1810 (Baltimore 
Archives, Case 1, I 7). In this letter Father Badin writes: “The church 
of St. Rose was opened on Christmas Day; that of St. Patrick [,Dan- 
ville,] will be opened probably on the 17th or 18th of March.” This doc- 
ument certainly refutes the contention that Saint Patrick’s was completed 
before Saint Rose’s. It was commenced before, but it rose still more 


slowly, a circumstance that shows how hard it was to build in Kentucky 
in those days, if one had to depend wholly on home aid. 


108 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


for his reception.“” Whether Brother Pius and the 
other scholastics accompanied them can not now be 
known; but it is quite probable they were also present, 
for there was certainly an effort to make the occasion 
as solemn as possible. None of these candidates for 
the priesthood could hardly have ever seen a bishop 
before. None of them had been confirmed, although 
they were already professed members of a religious 
order. For them, therefore, Doctor Flaget’s arrival 
was a source of genuine joy for more reasons than 
one. 

In the little band of clergy and seminarians that 
accompanied the saintly prelate to Kentucky was a 
young subdeacon, the Rev. Guy Ignatius Chabrat, 
destined later to become auxiliary bishop of Bardstown. 
He was soon to be raised to the priesthood. Since 
there was no other church in the new diocese well suited 
for so notable an occasion as the first sacerdotal ordi- 
nation not only in the state but even in the entire west, 
or large enough to accommodate all who might wish to 
witness it, Father Wilson suggested that Saint Rose’s 
should be used for the purpose. Bishop Flaget grate- 
fully accepted his proffer. ‘There, accordingly, Father 
Chabrat was priested on ember Saturday, December 
21, 1811. The event aroused considerable pious senti- 
ment among the people; but unfortunately, as the 
weather was bad, only a few could attend the cere- 
mony.” 

23 SpatpING, Early Missions, pp. 182-192; and Life of Bishop Flaget, 
pp. 60-72. 

24 Bishop Flaget to Archbishop Carroll, January 1, 1812 (Baltimore 
Archives, Case 8 A, K 3). Doctor Flaget says here: “On the 21 of 


December I had the happiness of ordaining Mr. Chabrat priest. The 
ceremony was performed in St. Rose’s Church; but as the weather was 


RELIGIOUS: PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 109 


Kither Father Tuite or Brother Pius must have 
presided at the organ and directed the music for the 
occasion. Most likely it was Brother Pius, for the 
priests were wanted in the sanctuary. At any rate, 
there originated at the time a life-long friendship 
between the newly ordained clergyman and the youth- 
ful Friar Preacher, which afterwards perhaps had its 
part in the promotion of both to the miter. 

The joy caused by the ordination of the first priest 
in Kentucky was soon followed by an event of sadness 
for the community at Saint Rose’s, which one may 
believe brought no little sorrow to the subject of our 
narrative. Brother Robert Young failed in health 
shortly after his religious profession. Tradition tells 
us that his uncle, Father Fenwick, took him and his 
brother, Nicholas D Young, to Maryland in the hope 
that the air of his native state might restore the invalid’s 
health; and that he did not live long after his return 
to the west. t 

No doubt Brother Robert was then on his way back 
to Kentucky, and was one of those who, Bishop 
very unfavorable, the congregation was small. Everything was carried 
out with much propriety and fervor. Previous to the ceremony, Mr. 
Badin explained minutely everything that was to be done, which gave 
great satisfaction to the people and myself.” 

In both his Early Missions and his Life of Bishop Flaget, Bishop, 
Spalding states that Father Chabrat was ordained on Christmas Day, 1811. 
Other writers, naturally, have followed him. We always felt that 
the feast of Christmas was an extraordinary time for an ordination; 
and all the more so in the Kentucky of that day, where the clergy were 
obliged to multiply their exertions in order that the people might hear 
mass on Sunday or a holy day of obligation once in a month or six 
weeks. This letter of Bishop Flaget, there can be no doubt, gives the 
correct date of the ordination of Father Chabrat. The truth of it is 
confirmed by the presence of Father Badin—perhaps other diocesan 


priests also—, and by the fact that the advent ember Saturday is one 
of the appointed days for ordination. 


110 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Spalding informs us, were with Father Fenwick when 
he met Bishop Flaget at Pittsburgh, in May, 1811.” 
While the date is not certain, Brother Robert Young 
seems to have died in 1812. His was the first death 
in the incipient province, and it is said that he was 
a plous young man who gave much promise. Pos- 
sibly these two facts have contributed more than 
anything else to keep his memory so long in tradition, 
albeit he did not live even to complete his studies.”° 


25 SPALDING, Life of Bishop Flaget, p. 69. 

26 Strange to say not a record of Brother Robert Young can now be 
unearthed at Saint Rose's. Possibly something about him found its 
way into the bonfire mentioned in note 5 of this chapter. Not even a 
tombstone marks his grave. Doubtless he was buried in a part of the 
parish graveyard set apart for the community. In 1829, Father Raphael 
Mufios started another burial place for the fathers and brothers, to which 
he had transferred the body of Father Wilson, who died five years before. 
However, no mention is made of a transfer of Brother Robert. He had 
been dead seventeen years, and there was then no one left at the convent 
who was there at the time of his death, and there were no tombstones in 
the graveyard at this period. Possibly ignorance as to the exact spot 
where he lay determined Father Mufios not to distrub his place of rest. 
Until quite recently only wooden crosses marked the graves in the 
cemetery of the community. Often these were allowed to fall and rot 
until all trace of the names, and sometimes even the memory of the 
buried, was lost. 

Fortunately a strong and definite tradition in the province kept the 
memory of Brother Robert Young alive. The writer often heard the old 
priests who knew Father Nicholas D. Young well say that he frequently 
told them that his brother Robert, about two years and a half older than 
himself, was in the first band of novices to receive the habit and make 
his profession at Saint Rose’s, and that he died there as a clerical novice. 
Father Fenwick, in his letter of July 10, 1808, telis Father Concanen that 
he has two nephews among the postulants at Saint Rose’s, who range 
from fifteen to nineteen years. Father Dominic Young, born in 1793, 
was fifteen years of age, which would make Brother Robert seventeen. 

Father Young, who spent the last year or two of his life in Washington 
City, retained a clear mind and memory until the end. A little while 
before his death, the fathers at Georgetown College gave a dinner in his 
honor, one of the purposes of which was to have him give them a history 
of the noted Young family. Our late friend, the Rev. Edward I. Devitt, 
S.J., then a young man and a student of history, was one of the instiga- 





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RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 111 


The college, a much larger structure, rose more 
slowly than the church. It appears to have been built 
piecemeal, as circumstances permitted. Almost every- 
one worked on it. But in 1812, on the receipt of a 
legacy left the community by Bishop Concanen, Father 
Fenwick brought it to completion in a hurry.” 


tors of the plan to bring the venerable clergyman to Georgetown. Father 
Young, Father Devitt often told us, was in fine fettle on the occasion. 
As he talked, Devitt and others, so posted that he could not notice them, 
took down what he said. The story appeared in the Georgetown College 
Journal of January, 1879. In it Father Young states that his brother 
“Robert became a Dominican, and died at the age of twenty-one.” This 
fact, as he was about two years and a half older than Father Young, 
and the latter was born on June 11, 1793, would make the date of 
Brother Robert’s birth late in 1790 or early in 1791, and that of his death 
about 1812. 

The extant records of the college conducted in connection with Saint 
Rose’s date back to shortly after 1812. In them one finds an occasional 
mention of Brothers Pius Miles, Dominic Young, Stephen Montgomery, 
Thomas Willett, and Louis Montgomery (his companions in the noviti- 
ate), but Brother Robert’s name does not occur once. 

The late Rev. Hugh Ewing of Columbus, Ohio, whose mother was 
a niece of Father Nicholas D. and Brother Robert Young, had an old 
family Bible, which is now in the possession of his sister, Mrs. Charles 
W. Montgomery of Newark, Ohio. It gives the date of Ignatius Young’s 
birth as December 29, 1790; that of Nicholas, the priest, as June 11, 1793; 
and that of Robert as February 21, 1795. Such family records are 
often inexact in some particular. If we exchange the dates of birth 
between Robert and Ignatius, making the former the elder, and born 
December 29, 1790, it fits in with almost mathematical nicety with the 
tradition of the province, the statement of Father Nicholas D. Young, 
and the scanty records of Saint Rose’s. To the writer the Bible record 
seemed clearly to say: “Robert Young died Jan.[uary] 6th, 1812.” 
Father Ewing maintained that the year was 1822; and the last time we 
saw the book “1822” was written in fresh ink. It is not stated that 
Robert was a Dominican; but the fact that he did not attain the priest- 
hood, and his early death in the backwoods of Kentucky, would account 
for this lapsus. General Hugh Ewing, father of the Rev. Hugh Ewing, 
got out a genealogical tree of the Fenwick and Young families, in which 
he followed the family Bible. He states that Robert Young “died without 
issue,’ but does not mention that he was a religious. 

27 Father Fenwick to Jacob Dittoe, Lancaster, Ohio, May 25, 1812 
(Archives of Saint Joseph’s Priory). 


112 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Meanwhile, however (seemingly from late in 1808, 
or early in 1809), the school had not only been in 
action; it had also gained a good repute. It was called 
Saint Thomas’ College, after the patron of Catholic 
schools, Saint Thomas of Aquin, the great Dominican 
theologian. In the beginning, the boarders were 
lodged partly in the first convent (the former Waller 
home), and partly in the portion of the new priory 
intended for postulants.**~ Classes were held in the 
parlors or any available place. But, in accordance as 
it was made ready for their reception, both boys and 
classes were gradually removed to the college proper 
until it sheltered the entire secular element of the 
institution. 

No sooner was the edifice completed than Saint 
Thomas’ College began really to flourish in point of 
numbers. Besides the inmates, there were not a few 
day scholars, both boys and young men, who came 


28 Father Fenwick is not always clear and definite in his statements. 
In one place in his letter of July 10, 1808, to Concanen he seems to say 
that there were twenty-two postulants at Saint Rose’s and immediately 
afterwards that there were twelve. If there were twelve, only his 
nephews, Robert and Nicholas Young, paid for their education ($100.00 
per annum); if twenty-two, twelve paid that sum. Whichever the 
number, ten were being educated gratis. 

As has been seen, the tradition that Richard Miles was one of these 
postulants, and that he had been with Father Wilson from the time he 
lived at the home of Henry Boone, can hardly be questioned. Nicholas 
Miles, Richard’s father, was a man of considerable means for the day, 
generous, large-hearted, and possessed of too much family pride to let 
his son be educated without pay. For this reason, together with the 
tradition that a large number of boys placed themselves under the fathers 
at this time (although few persevered), we are inclined to think that 
the number of postulants was twenty-two, and that Richard Miles was 
one of those who paid $100.00 per annum. As we learn from a letter 
of Fenwick to Bishop Carroll, May 7, 1808 (Baltimore Archives, Case 3, 
R 10), there were then eight postulants at the institution. Possibly all 
these had come from the school at Boone’s. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 113 


from the neighborhood, some of whom are said to have 
ridden eight or ten miles in order to take advantage 
of the opportunities thus offered them. Although 
religious bias ran rather rampant at the time, many 
forgot their prejudices under the impulse of the col- 
lege’s good name and their desire to obtain an education. 
Indeed, it seems quite sure that at times Saint Thomas’ 
had as many, if not even more non-Catholics than 
Catholics among its students. Thus it accomplished 
much good in the uplift of the state and in the way of 
breaking down the spirit of intolerance as well. 

As early as 1806, Fathers Fenwick and Wilson had 
journeyed through the state on horseback in order to 
make known their project of establishing a college ;*” 
nor did they afterwards slacken their efforts. Now 
their zeal began to bear its reward in every way, 
except in a pecuniary remuneration. Kentucky was 
then a new commonwealth sparsely settled; the people, 
as a rule, had very limited means; the financial de- 
pression continued; ready money remained scarce. 
One marvels rather that so many went to the college 
than that more did not attend it. We may call those 
days heroic for both the professors and their charges. 

Comparatively few at least of the students at Saint 
Thomas’, it has also flown down to us on the stream 
of tradition, could pay all their board and tuition even 
in the currency of Kentucky, which lost perhaps half 
of its value when it was necessary to purchase articles 
outside the state.” Many paid partly in kind; not a 


2) Fenwick, Scott County, Kentucky, to Bishop Carroll (Baltimore 
Archives, Case 3, R 11). This letter is not dated, but other documents 
show that it was written early in Ocober, 1800. 

30 That was in the days when the idea of state banks ran rampant. 
Their paper money, unbacked by specie, was sometimes even almost worth- 
less in another state. 


9 


114 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


few partly or wholly in labor. Before the completion 
of the church and college, most of these spent a few 
hours each day in helping in whatever way they could 
with the rising structures. Later they were employed 
at any kind of light work that was helpful to the insti- 
tution or conducive to their support. ‘The commodities 
or produce received from the pupils, some of whose 
parents were small merchants, proved useful for the 
table and in other ways, though more frequently than 
not they were far from being the most beneficial method 
of payment for the community. 

In this connection we may mention Robert Abell, 
later on one of Kentucky’s most efficient missionaries 
and noted pulpit orators. Some writers mention that 
he was in Saint Thomas’ College; but they do not tell 
that he was once a Dominican novice. Perhaps they 
were not aware of this fact; or perhaps they preferred 
to pass it over in silence. However, his failure there 
involves no disgrace, nor the recording of it any indel- 
icacy. He himself was not ashamed of it; neither did 
he hesitate to tell how he had once worn the habit. It 
was felt that his vocation lay in another than a religious 
life. For this reason, he left the novitiate, but wisely, 
and very probably on the advice of Father Wilson or 
Father Tuite, went to the diocesan seminary. He is 
a credit to Saint Thomas’ College and Saint Rose’s 
priory no less than to the Church of Kentucky. 

Never did he give up the friendships that he formed 
during his college and novitiate days with the Friars 
Preacher, among which we may note those with the 
future bishop of Tennessee and Father Nicholas D. 
Young. Like Christopher Rudd, he retained a grate- 
ful recollection of Saint Rose’s throughout his life. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 115 


Father Abell lost his father when he was ten years 
of age. The tradition of the province places him at 
Saint Rose’s in the early years of the institution; yet 
it does not seem to include him among the postulants 
there in May, 1808, in whom Father Fenwick found 
much consolation.” ‘Ten of these were educated gratis. 
Young Abell was most likely taken in the same way, 
for his widowed mother possessed no generous share 
of the goods of this world. Be this as it may, as long 
as he lived, the great preacher loved to visit his alma 
mater and the scenes of his early school days. Often 
he made a retreat there. 

Some years back, the older priests of the province, 
who had made their noviceship at Saint Rose’s, or lived 
there, and met him on these occasions, were wont often 
to speak of how he claimed many privileges on the 
strength of early associations. One of these was that 
of going to the novitiate to see the novices and students. 
On these visits he never failed to recount the old times, 
his experiences as a student and a novice, and how he 
had worked on both Saint Rose’s Church and Saint 
‘Thomas’ College. 

“Yes,” he would say in a jocular way, “I helped to 
build both the church and the college. ‘Then they sent 
me away. Father Wilson thought I did not have 
enough talent to become a son of Saint Dominic. But 
I think I have done pretty well—dquite sufficient to 
prove him wrong, and that I would have made a very 
creditable Dominican. However, God rest him, he was 
a great, learned, and holy priest, no less than an elo- 
quent jpreacher. IJ profited much from him. The 


31 Letter of July 10, 1808, to Concanen. Tradition has it that he 
received the habit after Father Nicholas D. Young made his profession. 


116 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Lord willed it so. Hence I am a member of the 
Church militant among the secular clergy, instead of 
among the fathers of Saint Rose’s, a place that I love. 
I’m sorry; but the ways of God are not the ways of 
man. I owe it to Saint Rose’s that I am a priest of 
God, for which I can not be too grateful.” ” 

Father Abell, eloquent preacher that he was, lost no 
opportunity to deliver a speech. On the occasions of 
his visits at Saint Rose’s he invariably gave the young 
men a discourse. In these talks he extolled the virtues 
of the founders of the establishment, spoke of the first 
priests trained there, told of the hardships and priva- 
tions which all bore bravely, gave exhibitions of Father 
Wilson’s style of oratory, and descanted on the studious, 
tireless habits of the boys in those days. The noted 
clergyman’s genial spirit and fidelity to his alma mater 
combined with his lectures (for such we may call them) 
to render his stays pleasant and welcome as well as 
interesting and instructive. From superior and master 
of novices he received every courtesy. The doors of 
the priory were ever open to him. He saw it, and it 
made him feel perfectly at home.*? 

32 Mr. Webb (Centenary of Catholicity, p. 109) quotes a letter in which 
it is stated that Father Abell went from Saint Rose’s to the diocesan 
seminary in 1811. But the old fathers of the province thought this date 
was too early, for on the occasions of his visits to Saint Rose’s he 
always declared that he had helped on the college until its completion, and 
this was in 1812. This contention is sustained by the date of his ordina- 
tion and the rapidity with which the first students of the seminary were 
advanced to the priesthood. However, it should be noted that the date 
usually given as that of his ordination, August 14, 1818, can not be 
correct; for Spalding’s Life of Bishop Flaget (pp. 183-205) shows that 
the bishop left Kentucky for Detroit in May, 1818, and did not return 
until the end of June, 1819. We wonder if the real date of Father 
Abell’s ordination might be August 14, 1817. 


33 Fathers Charles H. McKenna, William Quinn, and William F. 
Linahan were the last to die of those who used frequently to speak of 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 117 


One of the greatest difficulties against which our 
educational institutions had to contend in the early days 
was that of getting a sufficient corps of suitable pro- 
fessors. Catholic colleges were especially tried in this 
way. They received no public aid; they had scant 
means. Besides, those of the faith, for the protection 
of which they were largely founded, were not only 
vastly fewer in numbers, but also possessed of much 
less wealth than non-Catholics. Because of these han- 
dicaps, in the schools under church auspices the pupils 
in the higher grades helped with the teaching of those 
in the lower branches. We find the practice in about 
all our early American Catholic colleges. It was not 
uncommon even in institutions that were accorded 
public help. 

However, the plan, though not the best in itself, had 
its advantages in those pioneer days. First of all, in 
more than one instance it rendered possible a Catholic 
school which could not have been maintained under 
any other system. Again, it enabled many an ambitious 
young man, by thus making at least a partial payment 
for his education, to carry his own studies to a point 
of completion to which otherwise it would have been 
idle for him to aspire. It gave the budding student- 
professor confidence, taught him to think for himself, 
and often afforded him an insight into his subject- 
matter that he did not get from his teachers. 

The method would receive little support from modern 
educators; yet some of the greatest men of the past 
worked their way through college in the double capac- 
Father Abell’s visits. It seems that, even when on distant missions, 
he rarely, if ever, let a year pass without at least a brief visit to his first 
alma mater. Always did he eulogize Father Wilson’s solid, instructive, 


and eloquent sermons. Some have thought that he imbibed much of his 
ambition and inspiration for preaching from the learned Friar Preacher. 


118 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


ity of student and professor. We find them in the 
fields of literature, the classics, philosophy, the pro- 
fessions, and even pedagogy itself, no less than in that 
of commerce. Fortunately, therefore, the system was 
not regarded with an unfavorable eye by the public at 
that period. ‘That those not of the faith made no dis- 
crimination against Catholic colleges merely because 
they were so conducted is evidenced by the fact that they 
often selected them for the education of their sons in 
preference to schools favored by state patronage, or 
under the auspices of their own creed. ‘They realized 
that these institutions were guided by educated clergy- 
men who took good care that no teacher proved derelict 
in his duty, and that the moral character of the 
students was trained at the same time that their minds 
were developed. 

That the Dominican College of Saint Thomas, in 
Kentucky, was conducted on this plan seems beyond 
question.** The first bishop of Nashville had com- 
menced his studies before the opening of the college 
proper; but there is little doubt that he made a part 
of his classical course in it. At the same time, fol- 
lowing the custom of the day, he aided Fathers 
Wilson and Tuite in the instruction of the students 
less advanced than himself. 

After his religious profession, as has been seen, he 
began his higher studies. Along with these also, for 
there was little time for leisure in those days, he 
continued to lend a hand to the professorial staff in 

34 This was one of the topics on which Father Abell was wont to 
speak during his visits. Webb insinuates it on page 204 of his Centenary; 
Fenwick (letter of July 10, 1808) tells Concanen that the fathers intend 


to adopt it. Indeed, because of the small number of priests, the college 
could not have been carried on otherwise. 


RELIGIOUS PROFESSION, STUDENT, PROFESSOR 119 


whatever way it was required. He still took his turn 
at manual labor, as he was needed, or the occasion 
presented itself. ‘The office of prefect fell to him in 
regular turn. In all these duties, tradition tells us, the 
youthful Friar Preacher acquitted himself to the 
satisfaction of his superiors. No more could be ex- 
pected of one engaged in so many things. He is said 
to have shone especially in philosophy and theology. 
Yet he did not suffer these various occupations to 
interfere with his religious life or observance. Punc- 
tuality in attendance at the community exercises was 
one of his characteristics. He never failed to be among 
the first who appeared for them, unless prevented by 
an order from his superior, or the duty to which he 
was assigned. 

Those who may be tempted to doubt that one could 
have made much progress in the highway of education 
under such conditions should remember that the simple 
games of the past took little time. ‘The youths of that 
era were satisfied with less than are those of today. 
They lived under sterner conditions, which made them 
more serious, filled them with greater regard for their 
elders, gave them a readier spirit of obedience, rendered 
them more docile to the laws and regulations of their 
superiors, caused them to be industrious. ‘They rose 
earlier, and labored later. 

They were not afraid of work. Baseball, football, 
basketball, and our other athletic sports were unknown 
to them. The hours which modern youths in school or 
college give to these pastimes and festivity they gave 
to toil that was useful in many ways. ‘They did not 
take up all the topics taught the present generation, 
not a few of which are fantastic or merely ornamental; 


120 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


but what they did study they learned more thoroughly. 
Too often we simply teach our boys to walk on stilts; 
those of a hundred years ago were trained to tread on 
terra firma. They mastered principles and elements, 
thus laying a solid foundation whereon they could after- 
wards build through personal industry—which, after 
all, is the real objective of a college education. 

Brother Pius Miles spent more than ten years of 
such a student life before his ordination. It was a 
period which combined with a splendid religious train- 
ing to give him that character, at once charming and 
stalwart, which made him an ornament to the hierarchy 
of our American Church, no less than to its priesthood. 


CHAPTER VI 
END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 


OnE could ask no better criterion whereby to judge 
the character of a man than the life he leads and the 
spirit with which he lives it. Tried by such a test, 
Bishop Miles stands out as a personage who compels 
admiration. 

While, as Bishop Spalding states, the Dominicans 
in Kentucky wrote little, they were certainly faithful 
to their calling and zealous in the cause of God. They 
worked hard, and performed their duties well. During 
the time that he was superior, Father Fenwick wrote 
to his friends, Bishop Carroll and Father Concanen, 
frequently enough to leave us letters that throw much 
light on the earliest days of Saint Joseph’s Province 
of Friars Preacher. But from that date letters become 
sadly few. Fortunately, however, those that have 
survived the destructive agencies of time clearly estab- 
lish the truth of a living and inspiring tradition of 
the province, which, it can not be repeated too often, 
informs us that its founders and first recruits were 
scrupulously exact in the obligations of their state of 
life, when there was every reason to excuse them from 
a rigid observance. Even under the most adverse 
circumstances they sought minutely to carry out the 
rules and constitutions of their Order. 

The year in which the subject of our narrative was 
raised to the priesthood, for instance, the Master Gen- 

121 


122 THE FATHER OF)THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


eral writes to congratulate the little community at 
Saint Rose’s on its spirit of religious observance, and 
to encourage it in that holy practice, despite the dif- 
ficulties which stood in the way. ‘This was in 1816. 
No doubt the General’s letter was in reply to one from 
Father Wilson, no longer extant, giving an outline of 
the life led by himself and confréres.* 

Similarly, we have the letter (or rather extracts from 
it in an Italian rendition) from the provincial to 
Father Hill mentioned in the previous chapter. Al- 
though written on July 23, 1820, four years after the 
ordination of Bishop Miles, the document is pertinent 
to our subject just at this point, for it affords a pic- 
ture of the circumstances under which he lived, studied, 
and was trained, whether intellectually or spiritually.’ 
It is a detailed account of the daily community life 
at the convent, apart from the college, written to Father 
Hill in order to give him an idea as well of the needs 
of the little band of Friars Preacher as of the privations 
that he and some companions whom he expected to 
join him at Rome should be prepared to put up with 
on their arrival in Kentucky. In view of the scarcity 
of data, the communication is precious beyond estimate. 
For these reasons, in spite of its length, we translate 


the entire document back into its original language. 
My dear Brother in Christ :— 

I received your letter of August 13, [1819, ?] eleven months 
later. The present letter will serve as a commentary on another 
that I wrote to the Most Rev. Father General, in which I begged 
him for your speedy departure, and constituted you my procurator.® 
Please, therefore, let him see this letter also. 

1 Father Pius J. Gaddi to Father Wilson, March 16, 1816 (Archives of 
Saint Rose’s Priory.) 

2 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, (Vol, IV, No. 138). 

3 We could not find this letter of Wilson at Rome. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 123 


We carry out community life to perfection. No one has a far- 
thing in his own name; nor does anyone even think of having money 
here in a country where there are neither books nor any other 
desirable objects to purchase. We wear the tonsure just as you 
do at the Minerva. I enclose a sample of our clothes, habit, and 
so on. Since our principal concern is to live without the need of 
buying, we have all necessaries in our power; that is, food and 
clothing, except the secular dress for the missionaries. We have 
a blacksmith, a shoemaker, and a tailor; but we need a joiner 
and a mason for the mills, since the repairs on these and their 
maintenance amount to some two hundred dollars a year. 

We also need lay brothers, not for heavy labor, but for the 
direction of our negroes, of whom there are twenty-seven.* These 
servants are very easily controlled and industrious. I place so 
much trust in them that J dismissed our overseer last fall, an 
action that, in the way of saving, gained us a fourth of the pro- 
duce of the mills and farm. Indeed, as Americans have little 
idea of economy, a few lay brothers would be very useful, for 
they would about double our income [from the farm]. I hope to 
find one before long. Two or three others would not be too many. 

There are twelve of us in the community. Of late we have 
met with some severe losses. Two of our wagon horses died,” 
and our grain crops failed for two years in succession. Moreover, 
like the other people in this part of the country, we have been 
obliged to sell on credit. In this way, we shall probably lose 
also the portion of the farm products which we did not consume, 
and which we sold on credit, for the past two years. The sum 
amounts to six hundred dollars. These things, however, should 
not dishearten you, nor prevent you from bringing along with 
you the religious of whom you have written to me, as well as some 
lay brothers; for we have considerably over four hundred acres of 
land, which, if cultivated a little more, will supply us all with 
the means of a decent maintenance.® 


4 This number must be a typographical error, for it seems that the 
institution never had so many colored servants. 

5 “Due cavalli da carretta.” Carretta means either a cart or a carriage 
but it is almost certain that Saint Rose’s had no carriage at this early date. 

6 The Italian rendition of Father Wilson’s letter makes him say: “We 
have considerably over two thousand acres of land,’ which is a gross 


124 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


So far Father Wilson’s letter gives us, in addition 
to a literal confirmation of the tradition of the prov- 
ince, an edifying picture of the spirit of personal 
poverty and common life practised by those early 
Friars Preacher, than which one would hardly ask for 
a better proof of religious observance. It reveals the 
courage with which they bore privations, without lay- 
ing claim to any superior merit therefor. As a matter 
of fact, it seems certain, the document rather tones 
down the hardships of the community than gives them 
in their full measure. From it we conclude that the 
produce brought in through the students in the college 
almost supplied the table with food and the community 
with material for making clothes, which left a surplus 
from the farm for sale, small and uncertain as were the 
profits thus realized. 

Furthermore, the document affords a glimpse into 
the happier lot of our quondam enslaved Africans who 
belonged to Catholic institutions, where their bodily 
comforts were no less carefully looked after than their 
spiritual welfare." Nor should we overlook the length 
exaggeration undoubtedly due either to an oversight of the translator, | 
or to Father Hill’s well-known fertile imagination. The tone of his letter 
shows that Father Wilson was speaking only of the Saint Rose farm, 
which originally had four hundred and fifty acres, and there is no record 
of more having been purchased prior to this time. Hence our re-trans- 
lation of “considerably over four hundred acres of land.” Jacob Dittoe, 
it is true, had lately given Father Fenwick three hundred and twenty 
acres of forest land in Perry County, Ohio, for an establishment there. 
Besides, the community of Saint’ Rose had purchased twelve hundred 
acres of similar land in Union County, Kentucky, of which we shall 
speak later. The intention was to establish a college in Western Ken- 
tucky, but Bishop Flaget objected. As matters stood at this time, the 
fathers were heavily in debt for this property, and were holding on to 
it in the hope that they might sell it for something like what it cost, 


and use the proceeds for a plantation near Cincinnati. 
7 For a sample of the love which the old-time colored servants of Saint 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 125 


of time it took Father Hill’s letter to reach its destina- 
tion. The slow mails of that day rendered the life of 
religious communities all the more difficult, because they 
impeded communication with the higher authorities 
abroad. 

Father Wilson insisted, as long as he lived, on the 
tonsure being worn by the novices and those whose 
duties kept them at the college and convent. But, tra- 
dition tells us, his successor, Father Tuite, for reasons 
of health, and because he did not think it productive 
of good in a non-Catholic country, had the practice 
discontinued, about 1824 or 1825. Besides, the priests 
on the missions could not go tonsured into the places 
where they were often obliged to travel. Why then 
should it be worn by any? However, the kindly man 
is said to have incurred the displeasure of Bishop 
Flaget by this action, for he felt that it was a relaxation 
of discipline, albeit the tonsure had not been worn any- 
where else in the United States. 


You can therefore invite them [continues Father Wilson] to an 
abundance of pork, bacon, cabbage, turnips, and somewhat indif- 
ferent potatoes. They will also often have chicken, duck, goose, 
and turkey. From September until Christmas we have fresh meat 
[pork] that is fairly good. All these things are from our farm. 
But you must let them know that they will meet with tastes that 
will hardly appeal to their palates, unless they are skilled in the 
culinary art; for the fowl here are a little insipid, which, I fancy, 
comes from a lack of vegetable salts in their food, the sea being 
at so great a distance from us. For this reason, we are obliged 
to give salt to hogs, sheep, cattle, and the like. 

So you see we are not so badly off for the days on which meat 
is allowed.« We should be just as fortunate as you are in 


Rose’s entertained for the institution, see the writer's An American 
Apostle (or Life of Father M. A. O’Brien), p. 187. 

8 The community ate meat at three meals a week; that is, for dinner 
on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. But tradition tells us that, because 


126 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Europe, if our Americans knew anything about cooking. You will 
note the lack of such knowledge from their way of cooking fowl. 
Scarcely is a stranger arrived, when they send the negroes and 
dogs after the chickens. They take the first on which they lay 
hand, place an iron kettle on the fire, wring the heads off the 
chickens, thrust them into the kettle of boiling water while the 
flesh is still quivering, and leave them there until the feathers are 
ready to come off. Immediately the feathers are removed, the 
chickens are drawn and put into a slowly boiling pot. Finally, 
they are laid, together with some bacon, in a basting-pan until 
they are browned. Then they certainly have a musty odor and 
a distasteful flavor. 

We are very unfortunate as regards vegetables. It seems that 
but few of the seeds of England and Flanders are suitable or 
adapted to this warm climate, for they grow too fast. Generally 
speaking, I can not do better than liken our bread to that which 
you yourself made the first time you attempted to make bread at 
Bornheim.” Our water is hard or a bit limy, often muddy, and in 
the summer time not very fresh. In many things, it is true, we 
might better our condition; but we have so much to do that, without 
lay brothers and a little more money with which to provide accom- 
modations, our lot must remain a trifle cruel. Thus it is not 
altogether out of love, but also somewhat out of personal interest, 
that we are so anxious to see you and your companions. 

It will be especially on the days of abstinence that the Euro- 
peans will experience their greatest difficulty.1° We can not have 
a single mess of fish during the entire year, although a creek runs 
only a short distance from the house. While merely a dry furrow 


of the work in the college, it was now and then given to some also on 
another day. Yet some one always abstained from meat even at these 
meals. 

9 Father Hill was a convert, and had been a married man and an officer 
in the British Army. After his retirement, at an early age, he went to 
live at Bornheim, Belgium. His house stood near the college of the 
English Dominicans, of whom he was an intimate friend. By mutual 
consent, and the approbation of the Holy See, he and his wife separated 
that he might become a priest. She went to live with a community of 
nuns in Belgium. See Life of Bishop Fenwick, passim. 

10 The days other than those mentioned in note 8 of this chapter were 
called days of abstinence. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 127 


in the summer time, it rushes along like a torrent in the winter. 
Instead of fish we use apple pie and other pastry. Salt mackerel 
is exceedingly scarce. A single one costs a quarter of a dollar. 

When Europeans first arrive in America, they fancy that they 
can manage things better than those who were here before them. 
But they very soon discover that they are mistaken; because, for 
instance, if one knows how to make bread, he can not do it with- 
out being able to make the yeast also—and something more, even 
to the building of the oven. In case he can do all these things, 
he will be in good luck if he can find everything that he needs. 
For example, there is nothing here out of which to make yeast, 
except salt and sugar. 

So remember the saying of poor old Decker: “Come to a beau- 
tiful country, where you will find an abundance of all things, 
provided you bring them with you.” 
to me, holds in regard to all the sciences. That is to say, you 
can make no progress, unless you know all their accessory branches. 


The same thing, it occurs 


I hope to be able, on your arrival, to regale you with a little 
home-made beer; for we have here a young Irishman, a professed 
novice, who makes it well.1! Up to the present, our beverage has 
been miserable water tempered with a most wretched sort of 
spirits, which, if it be ever extracted from grain, has the strongest 
taste of smoking, or rather chewing tobacco.” 

But we go on improving every day. So we tried to make some 
cider a few days ago. However, here again, as usual, we did 
not succeed. Our apples ripen too soon, and the iron vessels turn 
black. Accordingly, we had to give up the enterprise. Neverthe- 
less we have four hundred ‘later trees that are doing well. We 
haven't enough laborers to make cider or anything else in that 
line without infringing on the time for studies and other duties. 
In a word, you can form no idea of the great need we have of help. 

I was about to forget Father Tuite’s vineyard. It has fifty- 
five vines that yield an abundance of mediocre grapes. Hence 
we can have wine also, when you come, if you can show us how 
to make it. Note well, we have a clumsy old wine-press. The 

il This was either Brother James Thomas Polin, Brother Hyacinth 
McGrady, or Brother Thomas Martin, all of whom afterwards became 


noted priests. 
12 Evidently Father Wilson knew little about tobacco. 


128 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


wine for mass, which we never touch except at the altar—not 
even in case of sickness, costs five dollars a gallon, or for four 
bottles. 

Doubtless the reader has not been able to repress a 
smile at some parts of Father Wilson’s letter. Yet, 
on the whole, it gives an accurate picture of country 
life in Kentucky a hundred years ago. ‘The same 
spirit of hospitality still prevails there, while the cus- 
toms have changed little in many respects. 

However, one is at liberty to disagree with the 
distinguished clergyman’s prejudice against chicken 
cooked so soon after it is killed. Connoisseurs in deli- 
eacies of the table universally, not only praise the 
method of cooking chicken in the rural districts of the 
south, but even declare that nowhere else has it so 
exquisite a flavor. Almost the same scene as that de- 
scribed by the learned divine may be witnessed today 
by a traveller throughout the states below the Mason 
and Dixon Line, when he stops for a meal even at the 
humblest household. Indeed, a southern countryman 
cares little for chicken, unless it is prepared for the 
table soon after it has been killed. ‘The bacon, when 
it is used, inproves stewed or basted chicken, while it 
receives a delicious flavor in return. Father Wilson 
evidently preferred the English custom of keeping 
meats until they are “good and ripe” before putting 
them into the oven. 

One would hardly expect so much wit in such a 
serious student and busy man as the provincial. No 
doubt he used the amusing details in order to tone down 
the trials and privations of the community, lest Father 
Hill and his companions should be frightened, perhaps 
even swerved from their good intentions. Be that 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 129 


as it may, the document shows a keen sense of humor 
which its writer employed with dexterity for their 
pleasure. Jor this reason, one is prepared to overlook 
a few inaccuracies and likely a little exaggeration, 
which, after all, may be due in part to a faulty Italian 
rendition of the original. Although it is not so stated, 
it was evidently the demands of the college that kept 
the brethren so occupied that they had little time to 
arrange conveniences for themselves. 

Having given his friend an account of the convent’s 
temporal affairs, Father Wilson proceeds to lay before 
him a more detailed recital of the religious and educa- 
tional side of its life. The story reflects no little credit 
on the institution, especially if we consider the adverse 
circumstances against which it had to contend. It 
reveals, in fact, a genuine spirit of mortification, no 
less than an earnest effort at advancement as well 
intellectual as spiritual, in all of which, tradition 
assures us, Brother Pius Miles set a wholesome ex- 
ample. On this point the document says: 

As for the disposition of our time, it is as follows. We are 
on our feet at four o’clock every morning, and make a half hour’s 
meditation. There is silence until the conventual mass, which is 
said three hours later; that is, at seven o'clock. During that time 
we also say the little hours of prime, tierce, and sext. ‘These are 
followed by a collation, when it is permitted; and it consists of 
warm milk just taken from the cow, for in the summer time the 
milk becomes sour very quickly. At times a little tea is allowed 
those who prefer it. We have the same for supper.t? After the 
collation (that is, at eight o’clock), the bell is rung for silence, 


13 We fancy that something was left out here in the Italian translation 
of Wilson’s letter; for it seems certain that a morsel of bread must have 
been taken not only at supper, but also at breakfast. Doubtless, too, 
sorghum molasses (perhaps, at times a little butter) was used with the bread. 


10 


130 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


which continues until dinner. On the fast days of the Order we 
take this meal at eleven o’clock; and on those of the Church at 
twelve, or midday. The rest of the year we dine at one o'clock. 
We follow this rule in order to have the fresher part of the day 
for study. 

We say none immediately before or immediately after dinner, 
according to the time prescribed for it. Before dinner we have 
a short meditation. From Trinity Sunday to the end of August 
we avail ourselves of the privilege of saying matins the previous 
evening, in accordance with the rubrics (§ 36). At this time 
vespers are said at three o'clock, P.M., and compline at four, 
followed by ten minutes’ meditation. Silence from this time until 
six o clock; then matins, supper, and recreation until the night 
prayers that we say at eight. 

From the end of August to Trinity Sunday we say matins 
immediately after the morning meditation; that is, at four o'clock, 
A.M.; and vespers at four, P.M.; silence thence until six, when 
we have supper. This is followed by recreation until compline, 
said at seven. Compline finished, all retire for the night. 

On feasts with simple octaves we say matins and lauds at mid- 
night. On those of the Order, and the higher feasts, we sing 
compline, together with the Salve, and more or less of the whole 
office, according as our choir permits; for only one of our young 
men understands the chant well.14 The singing is accompanied 
by the organ. 

As we have no lay brothers, those who are not priests work in 
the garden or do some other kind of labor a part of the after- 
noon. This is a necessity, although it really interferes with their 
studies. Four lessons in theology [and philosophy] are given in 
the morning and one in the afternoon each week. The simple 
novices and postulants are assiduously drilled in Latin. A spiritual 
instruction is given them every day an hour before dinner. Thanks 
to the late Bishop Concanen, nearly all of whose library was left 
to us, we are not so badly supplied in the way of books. The 
most of our young men know French and Italian. However, we 
need Touron’s works on the lives of the saints and illustrious men 


14 More feasts had simple octaves according to the Dominican rubrics 
at that time than are so honored today. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 131 


of our Order, some good books of controversy, and commentaries 
on the Scriptures. 

On Sunday mornings we teach catechism and Christian doctrine 
from ten to eleven o’clock. Then comes solemn high mass, for 
which the community sings the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Agnus 
Dei. In place of the Alleluia or the Gradual, a hymn is sung by 
some of the congregation in the gallery at the rear of the church, 
under the direction of an Italian who teaches them and accom- 
panies the singing with a clarinet. A sermon is preached after 
the mass. 

We have a bell of French make for the church, but it is cracked. 
We have also some relics, but are in need of a pyx. That which 
we have is Roman and made of copper plated with silver. The 
silver has become perfectly black. The parish, which surrounds the 
convent, is composed of three hundred and ten families. Besides 
these, however, there are many young men who work here and 
there through the country. The families have an average of eight 
souls, and should pay an annual assessment of half a dollar for 
each person over ten years of age; but we can scarcely collect two 
hundred and fifty, or at the most three hundred dollars a year. 
Even this sum is paid in kind, and not in coin, whereby we lose 
a third of the value it would have were it given in money. 

We should be perfectly content if the parish brought us even 
sufficient means to provide the horses and secular clothing necessary 
for the missionaries, which I fear will never be the case. None 
the less, we do not cease to perform gratis all religious functions, 
such as baptisms, marriages, and the like. The out missions bring 
us nothing. Now and then we get a dollar; but this by no means 
suflices to defray the expenses of them.1® Our people here, while 
rich in lands and victuals, are poor in money. The taxes are of 


little moment. Ours amount to only four or five guineas a year.!? 


15 Evidently this Italian was a professor in the college. Father Miles, 
however, is said to have had charge of the choir as long as he remained 
at Saint Rose’s. 

16 At this time two Fathers were in Ohio, one in Scott County, Ken- 
tucky, and one in Lexington. They barely supported themselves, and 
contributed little or nothing to the upkeep of their convent; perhaps at 
times they were an expense. 

17 According to some accounts that we have seen of that day this sum 
did not amount to more than twelve or fifteen dollars. 


132 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Conversions of Protestants are infrequent and somewhat long- 
drawn-out affairs. The reason of this is that there are only seven- 
teen missionaries, eight of whom are members of our Order, for 
the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee, a vast 
stretch of territory as large as all Europe. Even the bishop and his 
coadjutor are included in this number of priests.!® 

Our latitude is between the thirty-sixth and the thirty-seventh 
degrees. During the dry season it is very warm; but after the 
rains the weather is as moderate as in Flanders. The hot weather 
rarely begins before June, and it generally continues until Sep- 
tember. Winter commences around Christmas. At times the cold 
is intense, especially from four until ten o'clock in the morning. 
The rest of the day is milder. 

We need missals, breviaries, diurnals, a collectarium, a cere- 
monial of the Order, a martyrology, etc., etc., etc. 

Father Thomas Wilson. 

In spite of its length, one lays down the above doc- 

ument with a regret that the entire original could not 


be given, instead of extracts perhaps hurriedly made 
by the first translator who knew little or nothing about 
America. ‘The letter reveals the broad, orderly mind 


and keen insight of an eye-witness to the things of 
which he wrote. Because of an inability to differentiate 
strictly between what would be and what would not 
be useful for the history of the Church in the United 
States, it is very probable that points of much impor- 


18 The translation of Father Wilson’s letter makes him say that there 
were seventeen priests in the states mentioned; but it would seem that 
there were eighteen The Dominicans were Fathers S. T. Wilson, E. D. 
Fenwick, W. R. Tuite, R. P. Miles, S. L. Montgomery, W. T. Willett, 
S. H. Montgomery, and N. D. Young, The diocesan clergy, besides 
Bishops Flaget and David, were apparently the Reverend Charles 
Nerinckx, G. I. Chabrat, Anthony Ganilh, R. A. Abell, Charles Coomes 
(the first of that name), William Byrne, George A. Elder, and James 
Derigaud. A Rey. Peter Schaeffer had been ordained prior to this time, 
but he soon returned to Belgium because of ill health. Father Angier, 
O.P., had gone to Maryland for the same reason. Indiana seems to 
have been attended occasionally from Kentucky, the Rev. Anthony Blanc 
(later archbishop) having been called to New Orleans from Vincennes. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 133 


tance as well as of great interest were omitted in the 
Italian rendition which we have used. ‘The whole doc- 
ument, as it now stands, forms but one paragraph; 
and there are other signs that it gives us only a sum- 
mary of Wilson’s real letter, with merely the points 
that appealed to the translator’s ideas. Possibly it is 
in this way that we are to explain the failure to men- 
tion Saint Thomas’ College run in connection with the 
convent.” 


It was wise in Father Wilson to forewarn the pro- 
spective recruits to the province from abroad of what 
they should expect in the wilderness of Kentucky. 


That he gave them a true picture of the strict religious 
life that prevailed there is evidenced by a letter of 
Father Hill himself. Shortly after his arrival from 
the Convent of the Minerva, the residence of the Order’s 
General and its historic House of Studies in Rome, 
he assures a friend in England that the diet of the 
little community is indeed “very plain’, and its lite 
quite “sufficiently severe.” 'That the members enjoyed 
good health he seems to attribute to the providence 


19 There are partial Italian renditions of two other letters of Wilson 
and one of Fenwick to Hill (also a similar French rendition of Fenwick’s 
and one of Wilson’s) in this same year (1820), and a petition of Hill 
to the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda in the archives of that sacred 
congregation in conjunction with that which we have translated. Father 
Hill was a brilliant and learned man, an eloquent preacher, a good 
priest, and a zealous missionary; but he lacked judgment. He never 
succeeded in getting all the old leaven out of himself, while he retained 
too much of the military spirit to be placed at the head of things. He was 
also something of a dreamer. Unfortunately he won the confidence of 
Fathers Fenwick and Wilson, which caused the latter to appoint him 
his representative at Rome. At once he entered on the chimerical scheme 
of uniting the English and American provinces, which caused some un- 
necessary hard feelings. Some years ago, we had a talk with the late 
historian of the English Province, Father Raymund Palmer, on this sub- 
ject; not without reason he was very positive in his censure of Father Hill. 


134 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of God who “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.’ *° 

History combines with tradition, so strong and direct 
that it impels conviction, to fill out the story. It is 
known that wheaten bread was a luxury not often 
indulged in by the settlers of Kentucky. Pork and 
bread made of maize were their mainstay of life. 
Because they ate the former at only three or four meals 
a week, the fathers depended principally on the latter.** 
Fortunately it could be prepared in a variety of ways, 
from which we have the names “‘corn bread’, ““‘hoe-cake’”’, 
“corn pone”, “Johnny-cake’, “corn dodger’, “sweet 
pone”, “corn-cake’’, and so on. However prepared, 
it was not unwholesome; neither was it unsavory on the 
rather rare occasions, when butter could be used with it. 
At other times omnipresent sorghum molasses made at 
the home served to render this common staple more 
acceptable to the palate. Ordinarily necessity required 
the use of lard in its preparation. 

The best of all that the community could command 
went to the tables of the growing youths in the college. 
In fact, not infrequently the money that came from the 
wealthier boys was used to help the poorer. While 
nothing could be too good for their young charges, the 
fathers, novices, and postulants were content with the 
bare necessaries of life. 

Father Wilson himself tells us, early in his letter, 
that all his brethren’s clothes were made at home, with 
the exception of the better secular suits for the mis- 
sionaries. These outfits, however, were reserved for 
distant journeys and special occasions. Nobody, 

20 Letter dated November 21, 1821( London Catholic Miscellany, I, 


327-328.) 
21 See note 8 of this chapter. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 135 


unless he was almost continually engaged in apostolic 
work at a distance, had such a suit specially for himself. 
One was used by several men of about the same size, 
for in those days a little misfit caused no comment. 
The secular dress ordinarily worn by the priests 
for work in the parish and on the adjacent missions was 
made of jeans. 

Indeed, the wearing apparel of the community was 
not merely home-made; it was also home-spun and 
home-woven. Although they have now disappeared, the 
writer has often seen around the convent relics of the 
old-time wool-carder, spinning-wheel, loom, and other 
appliances for making cloth. Its colored servants 
were especially valuable because of this sort of work, 
for the price of more delicate stuffs was prohibitive 
to the institution’s slender means. 

At that time the world had not so much as dreamed 
of the modern utilities for which electricity is now 
employed. Perhaps nowhere in Kentucky was gas 
used for lighting purposes. Of kerosene or other oil 
lamps there were few, if any, in the state. The first 
artificial hight for reading and study at Saint Rose’s 
was furnished by grease from pork. It was poured 
into a shallow metal vessel of the shape and about the 
size of a pie-pan, with a ring-like handle on one side 
that it might be carried in safety, and a mouth or 
slight depression on the other. A strip of cloth, pre- 
ferably woolen, soaked in grease lay in the pan, with 
one end projecting a little over the rim at the mouth. 
This was the wick. Another vessel for the same 
purpose (in which the same material was used, and 
which probably came into service somewhat later) 
looked not unlike a cheap incense-boat, or an alchemist’s 


136 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


lamp. Candles, though used on the altars, and probably 
in the choir for the recitation of the divine office, did not 
come into general vogue at the institution until after the 
subject of our narrative had been sent to other fields of 
labor.” 

Father Wilson passed over such items as the above 
when writing to his friend, for they were common to 
every household in that heroic era of brave men in the 
new west. But the reader, we venture to believe, has 
not passed over the kindly way in which Father Wilson 
speaks of the people and palliates their failure to assist 
his community, when he might have indulged in some 
censure—perhaps justly, in view of the modest sum 
asked of them for the support of their pastors, and the 
fact that the college was for the education of their 
children. 

This trait, however, was characteristic of those early 
Friars Preacher, and especially of Fathers Fenwick 
and Tuite. We have in it a fact that speaks volumes 
in their praise, no less than indicates that they were 
of the kind that shrink from no drudgery for the good 
of souls. During the period of his education, the 
Father of the Church in Tennessee drank deeply of this 
spirit, which caused it to guide him through all his 
apostolic days. 

The course of philosophy and theology in the Order 
of Saint Dominic is long and profound. At the time 
of which we speak, owing to the circumstances with 
which the reader is now familiar, that given in Saint 
Joseph’s Province could not be carried out to the full 
length. Nevertheless it was thorough and painstaking. 


22 Even within recent years numbers of these out-of-date vessels, molds 
for candles, and old-fashion candle-sticks might be seen on the premises. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 137 


As the grease lamps were not conducive to study after 
dark, the community probably burned little midnight 
oil. Early to bed and early to rise was the rule. Even 
the literati of that period worked by day. Hence, 
perhaps, the reason why it used to be said of the 
brethren at Saint Rose’s that “the sun never caught 
them in bed.” 

Since time was precious and occupations many, 
Brother Pius Miles and his companions, unless other- 
wise occupied, were rarely seen without a book or their 
notes in hand. In this way, they were ready for ordi- 
nation after six years in their higher studies; that is, at 
the end of the second semester of 1815-1816. We can 
rest assured that none of them, either during their 
studies or in the retreat that immediately preceded it, 
prepared for this important event in their lives with 
greater care or more earnestness than Brother Pius. 
In view of his serious character, one can not doubt but 
that it dominated his thoughts from the time he finished 
his novitiate. 

This ordination deserves special notice in the Catholic 
history of Kentucky for various reasons. Never before 
had so many been ordained at one time in the state. The 
four (Miles, Willett, and the two Montgomerys) were 
the first priests wholly prepared in the west for the 
ministry. One of them, Father Willett, was Ken- 
tucky’s first native son to attain the priesthood; while 
another, the subject of our sketch, was the first cler- 
gyman entirely educated west of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains who became a bishop. 

Yet, strange to say, no contemporary record of the 
event can now be found. Perhaps stranger still is it 


that Bishop Spalding, although he followed the diary 


138 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of Bishop Flaget when writing the life of that pious 
prelate, should not have noted the ordination as priest 
of one of his own most intimate episcopal friends.” 
However, the year 1816 is always given as that in 
which he was ordained. Sometimes it is stated that it 
was in the month of September; and this is the tradition 
of the province. Mr. Francis X. Reuss, who spent 
years in serious investigation, for his valuable little 
book, places the event on ember Saturday in Septem- 
ber of the above year, which appears very likely, in 
view of the fact that this is one of the canonical times 
for ordination, and would make it occur on September 
21, 1816." In fact, we have seen this precise date given 
for the bishop’s ordination, but we could not find on 
what authority it was stated. 

Whatever the date, saintly Bishop Flaget made him 
an ambassador of Christ. The ceremony, it has come 
down to us by a tradition that seems unquestionable, 
took place in Saint Rose’s Church, and aroused so much 
pious curiosity that the sacred edifice could scarcely hold 
all who went to witness it. Quite naturally the people 
of that parish were the most keenly interested, for the 
Dominicans were the pastors of their souls, while 
Willett and the two Montgomerys were members of 
it. To the writer’s personal knowledge, the occasion 

23JIn the preface to his Life of Bishop Flaget Spalding tells us that 
this prelate kept a diary from 1812 to 1834. This record the learned 
divine used extensively for the above volume. Chapter VI (pp. 115-147) 
covers the years 1814-1816, but it makes no mention of Bishop Miles’ 
ordination; although his Early Catholic Missions places it in 1816. Only 
the first volume of the Flaget diary is now known to exist. The writer 
discovered it in the former seminary, at Preston Park, Louisville. It 
is now at Notre Dame University. Throughout it the bishop notes his 
actions day by day. 


24 Biographical Cyclopedia of the Catholic Hierarchy in the United 
States, p. 75. 


END OF STUDENT DAYS, ORDINATION 139 


was long remembered and formed a frequent topic of 
conversation. It could hardly have been otherwise; 
for this was the first ordination of Dominican priests 
in the United States, and accordingly marked an epoch 
not only in the history of the new American province 
of Friars Preacher, but also in that of the first parish 
which it took under its charge.” 

Piety characterized the religious life of Saint Rose’s. 
It dwelt deep in the heart, though it was not the kind 
which sometimes sits gracefully on the face. ‘This 
spirit, there is every reason to believe, combined with 
Brother Pius’ native disposition to cause his ordination 
to make a profound impression on him. ‘Thoroughly 
did he realize that he was now an, anointed of the Lord, 


25 In times past all the old people of Saint Rose’s Parish used to speak 
about the ordination of Bishop Miles, Father Willett and the two Mont- 
gomerys having taken place in the church there. The tradition is still 
universal both there and in the province. 

Father Howlett (St. Thomas’ Seminary, p. 58) says that the two 
Montgomerys were ordained in St. Thomas’ Church, Poplar Neck. But 
this statement can not be correct, unless Miles and Willett were also 
ordained there, which is highly improbable. Spalding, quoting Bishop 
David (in Early Catholic Missions, p. 224), simply says that three or- 
dinations had taken place in the Poplar Neck church by November, 1817. 
Two of these ordinations were those of the Revs. Peter Schaeffer and 
James Derigaud; the other seems to have been that of Father Anthony 
Ganilh. 

It does not seem at all probable, even were there no tradition to the 
contrary, that Bishop Flaget would insist, or consent, that the four 
young candidates to the priesthood should be taken to a smaller church 
for an event so notable at that time; or that they should be ordained 
any where except in a church of the Order, they being its first fruits 
in the country. There was all the more reason for ordaining them at 
Saint Rose’s, if, as seems to have been the case, the new Saint Thomas’ 
was under construction and not yet ready for such a ceremony; for 
then the ordination would have had to be performed in the oid log-cabin 
of achurch. As a matter of fact, Father Derigaud, who was raised to the 
priesthood in January, 1817, is supposed to have been the first man or- 
dained in the new Saint Thomas’. Reuss (op. cit., p. 75) says that the 
bishop was ordained at Saint Rose’s by Doctor Flaget. 


1440... THE FATHER OF (THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


and consecrated to the work of saving souls, no less 
than bound to a life of evangelical perfection. How 
faithfully he fulfilled this vocation we hope to reveal 
in the course of these pages. 

Of the earthly joys brought the young priest by 
his ordination the principal must have been the happi- 
ness which he saw that it gave his venerable parents to 
realize that they would leave on earth a son who would 
intercede for them at God’s altar. Doubtless they were 
present on the occasion, and among the most interested 
of the spectators. ‘The mother was then sixty-eight 
years of age. The father’s seventy-seven years told him 
that his life’s journey could not be far from its end. 
That on which their youngest child became a messenger 
of Christ, and that on which he offered up his first mass 
in their presence, were possibly the happiest days of 
two long, exemplary Catholic lives. 

' Tennyson, if we mistake not, wrote: 
“And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, 
And climb the Mount of Blessing.” 


This Father Miles, for thus he now became known, 
had bravely done. ‘The way was far from smooth, it 
is true; but with courage had he followed the light which 
beckoned him on. Blissful, therefore, was he in the 
thought that at last he could begin the work of an 
ambassador of Christ. 


CHAPTER VII 
EARLY PRIESTHOOD 


Tue College of Saint ‘Thomas, attached to the Con- 
vent of Saint Rose, in Kentucky, seems to have attained 
the zenith of its glory and numbers about the time of 
which we have now to speak. Although he himself had 
been a student all the while, tradition at least tells us 
that Brother Pius Miles had played no little part in 
its notable success. The financial condition of Ken- 
tucky and the west had perhaps never been so good as 
it was at this juncture. Thus, with the addition of the 
four young priests, Fathers Miles, Willett, and the 
two Montgomerys, the future of the pioneer college 
promised well. 

Unfortunately for it, however, Father Robert A. 
Angier had been obliged to relinquish the care of the 
missions in the northern part of Kentucky. Accus- 
tomed to community life and educational work abroad, 
the stress of his missionary efforts and. lonely existence 
in the wilds of the new west gradually undermined his 
health, both physical and mental. This was in 1815." 

1 Father Wilson to the superior of the Jesuit Fathers in Maryland, 
May 5, 1816 (Archives of the New York-Maryland Province of the Society 
of Jesus, Case 205, Z 17) ; extracts from letter of same to Rev. John Hill, 
in Rome, September 11, 1820 (Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, 
No. 138); Father Fenwick to Jacob Dittoe, in Ohio, April 20, 1816 
(Archives of Saint Joseph’s Priory); Spaxtpinc, Early Catholic Missions, 
and Life of Flaget; Wess, Centenary of Catholicity, and O’DANizL, Life 


of Fenwick—passim. 
In his letter to Hill, if the document is correctly rendered, Wilson 


141 


142 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Fenwick then combined this charge, as best he 
could, with that of his apostolate in Ohio. But now 
it became necessary for him to give all his time to the 
Catholics of the latter state, the needs of whose grow- 
ing Church demanded his constant attention. Out of 
the goodness of his heart, therefore, Father Wilson sent 
Father Samuel L. Montgomery to replace Father 
Angier at Saint Francis’, Scott County, and other 
missions in northern Kentucky.’ 

Meanwhile, the faithful had greatiy increased in that 
part of the Diocese of Bardstown. They lived in widely 
separated localities, between which the roads were often 
almost impassable. Accordingly, Father Willett, who 
had become a prey to pulmonary consumption, was 
soon sent to the aid of Father Montgomery, and sta- 
tioned at Lexington, whose growing congregation had 
erected a church and rectory. His superiors hoped 


is positively uncharitable, even unjust to Angier. However, the communi- 
cation was confidential; but Hill honored the trust reposed in him by 
giving the Propaganda a translation of the document. The letter itself 
shows that Father Angier had been a complete nervous wreck, and 
that this condition was brought on by overwork and the loneliness of 
his life—to which we may add the troublesome character of a part of 
his congregations. In 1816, Father Wilson sent him to Maryland in 
the hope that his health might be restored. There he took charge of 
several missions, on which he labored faithfully and fruitfully for over 
eight years. In the report of his diocese to the Propaganda (1818) 
Archbishop Maréchal says that he has three English priests, and that he 
would to God that he had more like them. One of these clergymen was 
Father Angier. In 1825, he went to England. Father Edward I. Devitt, 
5. J., (Records of the A. C. H. S. of Philadelphia, XXII, 241) says he 
undertook the journey in order to obtain help for his poor missions. 
Doubtless his English brethren persuaded him to remain in his original 
province, for he did not return to America. There he was a Preacher 
General, received other honors, and labored on for nearly a quarter 
of a century longer. He died on December 20, 1850, in Antwerp, where 
he was chaplain of the Alexian Brothers. 

2 Early Catholic Missions, Life of Flaget, Centenary of Catholicitw 
and Life of Fenwick, passim. 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 143 


that the outdoor life imposed by such a pastoral 
charge, for attendance on the scattered missions would 
keep him in the open air a great part of the time, might 
not only prolong the life of the zealous and talented 
young clergyman, but even so restore his health that he 
could realize the promise of his student days.° 

Perhaps even before Father Willett’s departure from 
Saint Rose’s, a similar response to the call of charity 
towards souls had deprived the west’s first Catholic 
educational institution of another of its useful members. 
Father Fenwick was overpowered in Ohio by labors no 
less trying than multifarious. He could not attend to 
all the needs of the faithful. The loneliness of his 
life was even greater than had been that of Father 
Badin’s in Kentucky some years earlier. In_ this 
dilemma he applied for assistance from his brethren. 
Father Nicholas D. Young, therefore, ordained on 
December 18, 1817, was at once sent to the aid of his 
reverend and revered uncle.* 

For these reasons, of the first five priests trained 
at Saint Rose’s only Fathers Richard Miles and 
Stephen H. Montgomery remained to help with the 
college, the parish attached to the convent, and _ its 
adjacent missions. ‘Thus the ordination made little 
change in the life of the subject of our narrative other 
than the standing it gave him, a substitution of min- 
isterial labors for his own class work under Fathers 
Wilson and Tuite, and the privilege of saying mass, 
the last of which he treasured more than words can 
express. ‘The added dignity did not lessen his humility 
or his spirit of obedience; but it deepened his piety, and 
quickened his zeal—a true sign of a real man of God. 


3 See note 2 of this chapter. 4 Life of Fenwick, passim. 


144 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Active, industrious, and spiritual, endowed with a 
good mind that had been well trained, and possessed of 
splendid judgment, it was but natural that he should 
have been one of the mainstays of Saint Thomas’ Col- 
lege even before his ordination. Now, as a priest, he 
became still more useful in that capacity. The institu- 
tion had no better disciplinarian. Following the custom 
of those days, for it was necessary, he taught several 
branches in the college. In addition to this, he helped 
with the education of the candidates for the priesthood. 
The students not only admired him; they loved him, 
whether as professor or confessor. ‘Their parents, 
whether Catholics or non-Catholics, esteemed him; nay, 
they placed implicit confidence in his advice. Father 
Miles’ name was on every lip, and his assistance was 
sought in every emergency. 

Neither the regard that he commanded, nor the trust 
reposed in him was undeserved. Forthright and frank, 
somewhat reserved, yet open and affable, he ever gave 
the impression: There is a man whom I should like to 
have for a friend—a person of genuine worth in whose 
hands one would be safe. With a mild, quiet strength 
of character and firmness of principle he combined a 
whole-souled, kindly, and generous disposition, which, 
when he was once understood, won and held the heart. 
Never was he known to deceive, or to betray the faith 
placed in him, or intentionally either to hurt the feelings 
or injure the reputation of even an adversary.” 

Doubtless it was these sterling qualities that so en- 
deared the future bishop of Tennessee to Father Wil- 
son; for it has been handed down to us that perhaps 


5 Frequent echoes of the praises that the old people used to heap upon 
Father Miles are still heard in central Kentucky. 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 145 


there was no other person (not even excepting Father 
Fenwick) in whom the provincial placed such unlimited 
confidence, or to whom he entrusted so many of his 
confidential and important affairs. A true priest would 
hardly ambition a higher encomium from his superior. 
In this case, coming as it did from a man of Father 
Wilson’s learning, judgment, and character, it be- 
speaks a splendid tribute to great merit. 

Father Miles was an all-round man, useful in what- 
ever kind of labor his superiors employed him. Yet 
perhaps in no place did he prove more valuable than 
in the college. Indeed, his long and intimate connec- 
tion with that institution, no less than the distinguished 
services that he rendered it, calls for a further word 
on Saint Thomas’ College. Unfortunately, thanks to 
the fault for which the Friars Preacher have been so 
often censured by historians the world over, that of not 
keeping records ot their own work (which is about 
the only sphere of labor in which they have lagged), 
it is now impossible to do the subject the justice that 
it deserves. Because of the same carelessness as regards 
personal glory, even by far the greater part of the ac- 
counts which must have been written of matters per- 
taining to the former Saint Thomas’ are irrevocably 
lost. 

However, this handicap is partially offset by another 
source of information which appears more creditable 
than lore ordinarily obtained in this way. In the coun- 
try, villages, and small towns, because of the greater 
leisure of the people and the fewer distractions that 
engross their minds, traditions are not only kept longer 
but also more faithfully than in the busy marts of com- 
merce and industry. The more intelligent the people, 

il 


146 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the more trustworthy the knowledge thus preserved. 
Possibly nowhere in the world have the early tradi- 
tions of their Church been more keenly treasured or 
better retained than by the Catholics of Kentucky, 
which still remains largely agricultural; and they are 
decidedly intelligent—many of them educated. ‘This 
is perhaps especially true of the neighborhood around 
Saint Rose’s, which is in the very heart of the state 
and in the center of the first Catholic settlements. 
There has been practically no immigration into that 
part of Kentucky since Saint Thomas’ College got well 
under way. Thus the traditions concerning this col- 
lege have been handed down from generation to gener- 
ation with almost incredible uniformity. ‘Their trust- 
worthiness is further substantiated by the few docu- 
ments that still remain, and by the traditions of Saint 
Joseph’s Province of Friars Preacher. It is in this 
way that we know for certain that the college pros- 
pered, in point of numbers, from the very beginning.° 
Whatever the source of information, be it ever so 
meager, it assures us of the above fact, as well as tells 
us that the institution was held in the highest regard, 
that students came to it from far and near, and that 
perhaps no college in the land at that day had a more 
respectable curriculum. All this is the more credible 
in that the founders of Saint Thomas’ were expert and 
experienced educators, men who had aided in bringing 
Holy Cross College, Bornheim, Belgium, to the zenith 
of its renown.’ Doubtless it was a continued growth 
in the number of pupils, together with the annoyances 
6 The stranger visiting the rural portions of Kentucky inhabited by 
Catholics can not but be struck by the vividness of their traditions. 


One might say that the people almost live on them. 
7 PautmMeErR, Life of Cardinal Howard, passim; Life of Fenwick, passim. 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 147 


and inconveniences inseparable from the attendance of 
day-scholars at boarding schools, and the increased ex- 
penses, that explains the following entry in an old ac- 


count book chiefly devoted to the college. 
1815 
F.[ather] T.[homas] Wilson, at Easter, reassumed the care 
of the College. The pension was raised from seventy-five Dollars 
to one hundred and twenty-five. Agreed to admit no more externs, 
and to dismiss the present ones as soon as their term is out.® 


Temporary illness, it seems, had obliged Father 
Wilson to entrust the charge of Saint Thomas’ into 
other hands for a while. It is said, in fact, that for a 
time serious fears were entertained lest his sickness 
should prove fatal. Tradition informs us that the 
resolution to exclude day-pupils aroused a veritable 
storm in the town of Springfield and through Wash- 
ington and Marion counties; and that the furore 
caused it to be cancelled.? It would seem also that a 
like opposition to the advancement of the board and 
tuition bill from seventy-five to one hundred and twen- 
ty-five dollars a year resulted in a compromise on one 
hundred. Although it would be ridiculous to attempt 
to run a boarding school on such terms in our day, it 
should not be forgotten that a century ago a hundred 
dollars represented a sum of no small consideration. 

Another record of interest appears shortly before 
the date of the bishop’s ordination, which reads: “Jef- 
ferson Davis arrived July 10, 1816.” *° The president- 
to-be of the ill-fated Confederate States of the South, 

8 Page 16. 


9 What is now Marion County was then a part of Washington County. | 


Many boys from the remoter parts of these counties are said to have 
boarded with their relations or friends, who lived nearer the college, 
during the school year, and to have attended as day pupils. 

10 Page 47. 


148 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


then a boy only eight years of age, had travelled on a 
pony all the way from the extreme southwestern county 
(Wilkinson) in the state of Mississippi. Scarcely 
could one wish a better proof of the wide repute which 
Saint Thomas’ College enjoyed. The distinguished 
statesman is said to have retained a strong affection 
for the place throughout his long and eventful career. 
Possibly it was, in part, this love that caused him, on 
one occasion when he met Father Matthew A. O’Brien, 
to kneel and ask the venerable priest’s blessing.” 

It was but natural that Mr. Davis’ recollections 
should prove inexact in some particulars as regards 
that part of his hfe when dictating, at the age of 
seventy-nine or eighty years, the course of his early 
boyhood. In addition to his great age, one must con- 
sider the delicate state of his health at the time.” 
Besides, all his associations, environments, and activities 
tended to dim his reminiscences of the days he spent 
at Saint Thomas’. However, his experiences there will 
be best told by himself. They brought him into 
intimate contact with Nashville’s first bishop, throw 
light on the times, and show that boys, even at that 
era of rigid discipline, were still boys, and occasionally 
indulged in innocent pranks. As quoted by his affec- 
tionate widow, Mrs. Varina (Howell) Davis, the story 
runs: 

My first tuition was in the usual log-cabin school-house; though 


in the summer, when I was seven [eight] years old, I was sent 
on horseback through what was then called ‘““The Wilderness’ —by 


11 Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America 
(By His Wife), p. 8. 

12 Q’DaniEL, An American Apostle (Life of Very Rev. Matthew 
O’Brien), p. 297. 

13 Jefferson Davis as in note 11 above, pp. 2-3. 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 149 


the country of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations—to Kentucky, 
and was placed in a Catholic institution then known as St. Thomas, 
in Washington County, near the town of Springfield. 

In that day (1815) [1816] there were no steamboats, nor were 
there stage-coaches traversing the country. The river trade was 
conducted on flat- and keel-boats. The last named only could be 
taken up the river. Commerce between the Western States and 
the Lower Mississippi was confined to water-routes. The usual 
mode of travel was on horseback or afoot. Many persons who 
had gone down the river in flat-boats walked back through the 
wilderness of Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere. We passed many 
of these daily, on the road... . 

The party with which I was sent to Kentucky consisted of 
Major { Thomas] Hinds, (who had charge of the famous battalion 
of Mississippi dragoons at the battle of New Orleans), his wife, 
his sister-in-law, a niece, a maid-servant, and his son Howell, who 
was near my own age, and like myself, mounted on a pony. A 
servant had a sumpter mule with some supplies, besides bed and 
blankets for camping out. ‘The journey to Kentucky occupied 
several weeks.14 

At this point of his narrative the venerable man tells 
of a halt at Nashville, where Major Hinds wished to 
visit his friend and former commander, General Andrew 
Jackson. In lieu of Mr. Davis’ youthful impressions 
of this noted pioneer of Tennessee, for they have no 
bearing on our subject, we take occasion to note two 
ships in his memory. The records show that this jour- 
ney was in 1816, instead of 1815; and that the young 
traveller was eight years of age, instead of seven, as 
stated in his story. Small matters these, it is true; yet 
it is well to correct them for the sake of historical 
accuracy. 

In the same connection it is worthy of note that it 
is probable Major Hinds also brought his own son 
Howell to Kentucky in order to place him in Saint 


14 [bid., pp. 8-11. 


150 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Thomas’ College, for we find the registry of a “Hynes” 
at almost the same time as that of Master Davis. The 
boy’s first name is not given, but the similarity of the 
pronunciation of “Hinds” and “Hynes” might easily 
account for the error in spelling found in the records. 
This mistake could have been rendered the easier by 
the fact that there was already an Alfred Hynes in the 
school. Continuing his life story, the ex-president of 
the Confederacy says: 

The Kentucky Catholic School, called St. Thomas’ College, 
when I was there, was connected with a church. The priests were 
Dominicans. They held a large property; productive fields, slaves, 
flour-mills, flocks, and herds. As an association they were rich. 
Individually, they were vowed to poverty and self-abnegation. 
They were diligent in the care, both spiritual and material, of 
their parishioners’ wants. 

When I entered the school, a large majority of the boys belonged 
to the Roman Catholic Church. After a short time I was the only 
Protestant boy remaining, and also the smallest boy in the school. 
From whatever reason, the priests were particularly kind to me— 
Father Wallace, afterward Bishop of Nashville, treated me with 
the fondness of a near relative. 

As the charge has been frequently made that it is the practice 
of the priests in all their schools to endeavor to proselyte the boys 
confided to them, I may mention an incident which is, in my case 
at least, a refutation [of the arraignment]. At that period of 
my life, I knew, as a theologian, little of the true creed of Chris- 
tianity, and under the influences which surrounded me I thought 
it would be well that I should become a Catholic, and went to 
the venerable head of the establishment, Father Wilson, whom 
I found in his room partaking of his frugal meal, and stated to him 
my wish. He received me kindly, handed me a biscuit and a bit 
of cheese, and told me that for the present I had better take some 
Catholic food. 

I was so small at this time that one of the good old priests 
had a little bed put up in his room for me. There was an organ- 
ized revolt among the boys one day, and this priest was their 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 151 


special objective point. They persuaded me to blow out the 
light which always burned in the room; so, after everything was 
quiet, I blew it out; then the insurgents poured in cabbages, 
squashes, biscuits, potatoes, and all kinds of missiles. As soon as 
the light could be lit, search was made for the culprits, but they 
were all sound asleep, and I was the only wakeful one. 

The priests interrogated me severely, but I declared that I 
did not know much and would not tell that. The one who had 
especial care of me then took me to a little room in the highest 
story of the monastery and strapped me down to a kind of cot, 
which was arranged to facilitate the punishment of the boys; but 
the old man loved me dearly and hesitated before striking me a 
blow, the first I should have received since I had been with the 
monks. He pleaded with me: “If you tell me what you know, no 
matter how little, I will let you off.” ‘Well’, said I, “I know one 
thing. I know who blew out the light.” The priest eagerly prom- 
ised to let me off for that piece of information; and then I said: 
“I blew it out.” Of course I was let off, but with a long talk 
which moved me to tears and prevented me from co-operating with 
the boys again in their schemes of mischief.!° 

These reminiscences of one of our most noted and 
single-minded statesmen, given out near the close of his 
life, demand little comment. They breathe a spirit 
not merely of respect, but likewise of affection for the 
former Kentucky college in which he had laid the foun- 
dations of his later education. The amusing incident 
which he recounts, and which has ever been typical of 
life at boarding schools, bears out the tradition as 
regards the kindly discipline that prevailed at Saint 
Thomas’. Perhaps it was somewhat out of the ordinary 
in that day when rigid corporal punishment was too 
often regarded as the best, if not the only, means of 
correction. ‘The gentle system which prevailed at the 
institution in Kentucky is said to have borne excellent 
results. Doubtless, however, severe measures could be 


15 Jbid., pp. 11-15. 


is2 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


employed when necessary, but they seem to have been 
_ the exception. 

Father William R. Tuite was undoubtedly “the 
good old priest” placed in special charge of Master 
Davis, and with whom the boys conspired to have a 
little fun. It has been handed down to us that his 
kindly disposition at times led the boys to attempt 
tricks on him. However, he was a good professor. 
The youths loved him, and would do almost anything 
for him. 

Like most outsiders, young Davis labored under the 
erroneous impression that the convent was wealthy. 
Similarly, tradition leads us to believe that he was de- 
ceived as regards the Catholic students so greatly 
outnumbering the non-Catholic, and as to his soon 
being the only non-Catholic at the school, unless this 
happened in the time of vacation, when nearly every 
one had gone home. Possibly the fact that all attended 
the religious exercises, which was required for the sake 
of discipline, led the youth to believe some to be Cath- 
olics who were not of the faith. Father Miles became 
bishop of Nashville. There was no Father Wallace 
at the convent. So it would seem that the venerable 
ex-president confused Father Willett’s name with that 
of Wallace, and that he had been misinformed as to 
which one of his former professors attained the miter. 

The records do not tell us when Master Davis left 
Saint Thomas’ College; but he himself says that he 
was away from home for two years, from which we 
may conclude that he studied there from 1816 to 1818. 
Furthermore, he states that he had been sent to this 
distant school without his mother’s knowledge or con- 
sent (for what reason we do not know); that she 


HARLYMPRIESTHOOD Leo 


became impatient for his return; and that her anxiety 
was the cause of his recall. Possibly, therefore, had not 
Mrs. Davis’ discontent intervened, this distinguished 
statesman might have been numbered among the grad- 
uates of the first Catholic educational institution in the 
new west.’° 

Another tradition substantiated by the Davis recol- 
lections is that as long as he lived, the personal mag- 
netism of pious and learned Father Wilson drew youth 
to him in trusting confidence as a magnet draws steel. 
Father Stephen Badin writes that the number of 
students at Saint Thomas’ College soon exceeded a 
hundred.“ The tradition of Saint Joseph’s Province 
and Washington County, Kentucky, assures us that 
at one time there were more than two hundred pupils, 
certainly no ordinary enrollment for a boarding school 
at that period. This large number, we are convinced, 
must have been attained during the time that the former 
confederate chieftain was there, for obstacles of which 
we shall speak in the next chapter seem certainly to 
have lessened the attendance in later years. 

Scanty and incomplete as are the extant records, they 
show names representative of not a few of the most 
respectable families in Kentucky, both Catholic and 
non-Catholic. Such, for instance, are the names: Baker, 
Bates, Boone, Bullock; Calhoun, Clark, Clay, Crughan; 
Durbin, Duval; Gough; Hagan, Hill, Hite, Hopkins; 

16 Jbid., pp. 15-16. The tradition is that, unlike her husband and illus- 
trious son, Mrs. Davis was strongly biassed against things Catholic, and 
that this prejudice had its part in her discontent. 

17 Photostat copy of an extract from his article “L’Etat de la Religion 
Catholique dans le Kentucky, et dans les Territoires Voisins” in L’Amt 


de la Religion, December 8, 1819. The extract is in the Propaganda 
Archives, America Centrale, Vol. IV, No. 56. 


154 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Janes, Jones, Joyce; Kelly, Kruggs; Lancaster, Love, 
Lucas; McElroy, Mackay, Manning, Maxey, Micken, 
Montgomery, Moore; Ormsby; Polin, Pope, Prather; 
Rowan; Sanders, Simms, Skidmore; Tarlton, Thomas, 
Tool, Toon; Worland. A few names suggest Ohio or 
even Maryland. 

Louis and Henry ‘Tarrascon were probably sons of 
John or Louis Tarrascon, early French millers of 
Louisville, Kentucky. ‘The other French names (over 
twenty in number), it seems certain, were borne by 
young men and boys from Michigan, Louisiana or the 
vicinity of Saint Louis. Spanish youths, from Latin 
America, had not yet begun to come to the United 
States for their education. 

In connection with James Boisleduc, whom tradi- 
tion associates with New Orleans, the records reveal 
an incident that is at once full of interest and illustra- 
tive of the time. Like Jefferson Davis, he came all the 
way on horseback, arriving at the college on Sunday, 
August 13, 1815. Evidently his father had instructed 
him to dispose of his steed, and to use the proceeds in 
part payment for his education. It was sold at public 
auction. Possibly the animal looked its worse from the 
long journey; for it brought only twenty-five dollars 
and twenty-five cents, out of which the crier received 
one dollar for himself, and twenty-five cents for the 
state. Another French student, Julien De Pestre, who 
arrived just a month earlier, seems to have been for- 
tunate enough to hire the use of his horse for the 
return journey of a young man who lived in the same 
part of the country as he, and was about to leave 
school."® 


18 Account Book, pp. 15, 16. 


BOR UYOPR LE onOOD 155 


Tradition has it that a number of Saint Thomas’ 
students attained no little distinction in their after life. 
Thus the Hon. James P. Bates, a state representative 
from Barren County for many years, is said to have 
been the James Bates whose name appears in the 
records. Similarly, David W. Maxey, the representa- 
tive from Hart County in 1845, it is said, was the same 
Maxey noted in the records without his first name. 
John, William, and Minus Pope who went to school 
there, we are told, were sons of the Hon. John Pope, 
one of Kentucky’s noted lawyers and statesmen, in the 
state legislature, a congressman and senator of the 
United States, long a resident of Washington County, 
and for six years governor of the Territory of Arkansas. 

Stephen Ormsby, another of its students, is said to 
have been the son of the Hon. Stephen Ormsby, long 
a lawyer of note, a congressman, and a judge of the 
circuit court who commanded the highest respect of 
all with whom he had to deal. Mr. Webb claims that 
the Hon. John Rowan, Jr., son of one of Kentucky’s 
most illustrious lawyers and judges, studied at Saint 
Joseph’s College, Bardstown.”? But the tradition 
around Saint Rose’s has ever been that he was a student 
of the former Saint Thomas’ College attached to that 
institution. Certainly the name of Rowan appears in its 
books, though without the student’s first name; and the 
date given by Webb (1823 at the earliest) seems too 
late for John Rowan’s school days. The Green Clay 
who studied at Saint Thomas’, there appears to be no 
doubt, was the son of doughty General Green Clay, 
one of the noted pioneers of Kentucky.” 

19 Centenary of Catholicity, p. 281. 


20 None of the students mentioned in the last three paragraphs seem 
to have been Catholics. 


156 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Elisha J. Durbin became a priest of the Diocese of 
Louisville, and was one of its most faithful and efficient 
missionaries. Thomas J. Polin and James V. Bullock 
entered the Order of Saint Dominic, as members of 
which they rendered conspicuous services to the Church 
—the first in Kentucky, and the latter in various parts 
of the country.” 

The above were all boarding scholars; those whom 
we now mention were most likely day pupils, for they 
lived in Washington County, in the vicinity of the 
college, whence few boarders were obtained. Richard 
Rudd, a brother of the Christopher A. Rudd spoken 
of in a previous chapter, served in our last war with 
England, settled in Bardstown, was one of Nelson 
County’s most highly respected citizens, and repre- 
sented his district in the state congress for four terms. 
Captain James Rudd, another brother, moved to Louis- 
ville, where he was no less a pillar of the Church than 
a leader in civic affairs. He held many offices in the 
city and was its state’s congressman three times.” 

Robert C. Palmer became a physician who enjoyed 
a wide reputation, and served in the state senate for 
seven years. Doctor Palmer was not a Catholic. A 


21 Father Durbin had been a parishioner of Father Angier in northern 
Kentucky. Tradition tells us that he went to Saint Thomas’ College with 
the intention of becoming a Dominican, and that he was actually a postu- 
lant. Doubtless his love for Father Angier drew him thither. Later, 
however, he changed his mind, went to the seminary and became a priest 
of the diocese. He retained his love for the Order as long as he lived. 
He was especially fond of Father Angier, whose praises he sang until 
the end of his long life. See Webb’s Centenary of Catholicity, pp. 92, 364. 

22In his Centenary of Catholicity, pp. 79, 303, 304, Webb speaks of 
these Rudds in terms of praise, but he does not state that they went to 
Saint Thomas’ College. Although their names do not appear on any 
record (in fact, we have found no record of any day pupil), the tradition 
about them being students of St. Thomas’ is too strong, direct and persis- 
tent to be at all doubted. The same remark applies to all those men- 
tioned here as day-scholars. With two exceptions, they were surely 
Catholics. 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 157 


man of exceptional character, and having a wide prac- 
tice, he was beloved in Washington and the adjacent 
counties. William Osbourn represented the same 
county as its congressman in the thirties. William T. 
Hamilton, the writer’s grandfather, was elected to a 
similar position from Marion County in 1849, serving 
one term. Like Doctor Palmer, James P. Barbour, a 
state representative in 1841, was not a Catholic. 

Benjamin and Richard Wathen, after they graduated 
in medicine, settled in Breckinridge County. An 
honor alike to the profession they followed, and to the 
religion they professed, it is no matter for surprise that 
they enjoyed not only the good-will but also the high 
esteem of all, whatever their walk in life or their creed. 
‘Webb says of them: “Among the Catholics of the 
county [that is, Breckenridge], especially, there should 
be none to forget how much they did for religion in 
their day that has not yet ceased to reflect benefits on 
the living. ... Their Catholic zeal was proverbial, 
and in no emergency were they ever known to respond 
ungenerously.” ** 

Passing over others of perhaps lesser renown, we may 
now mention Judge Charles C. Kelly of Springfield, 
one of Kentucky’s legal lights. He held important 
positions; yet he was not less faithful to his religion 
because of his profession or busy life. It is worthy of 
note, in this connection, that in the state constitutional 
convention of 1849, Garrett Davis, prominent in the 
“Native American” movement, later a leading spirit 
in the “Knowing-Nothing” party, ever an adversary of 
the Catholic Church, introduced an amendment to the 
constitution of the state that would have deprived Cath- 


23 Centenary of Catholicity, pp. 154-155. 


158 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


olics of their civil rights. Strange as it may seem today, 
the proposed change was not defeated without consid- 
erable difficulty, and after much heated controversy. 
Among its most effective opponents were Judge Kelly 
and Captain James Rudd who were members of the 
convention. Thus two former students of Saint 
Thomas’ College had a prominent part in frustrating 
the legalization of one of the most tyrannical acts ever 
attempted against the Church in the United States.** 

Nearly all the men mentioned in the foregoing pages 
had entered the college before Bishop Miles was 
ordained. Some of them had perhaps left it and begun 
their life’s work. But he took a generous share in 
their education, whereby he contributed not only 
towards the advancement of the state, but also the 
betterment of society, as well as helped to break down 
religious prejudices against the Church and to broaden 
her sphere of influence through men, albeit not her 
members, stationed in different parts of the country, 

24 See WEsB, op. cit., p. 304, and Cotrins, History of Kentucky, Ul, 82. 
Ignatius Spalding of Union County also took a prominent part in the 
defeat of the Davis proposal. There is a tradition that Spalding was 
educated at St. Thomas’, but we did not include him in the list, for it 
could not be so well substantiated. However, he was an educated man, 
and there was no other Catholic school at the time from which he could 
have received his education. 

Christopher or Richard Rudd, if not both of them (for both were in 
the senate at the time), took an active part in the debate for the incor- 
poration of Loretto and Nazareth Academies. So did Doctor Richard 
Forest, who is also said to have been an alumnus of Saint Thomas’. 
(See Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, IV, 557 ff; and Cotttns, op. 
cit., II, 749). Another noted man who, it has been persistently handed 
down to us, was a student at this Dominican college was the Rev. James 
M. Lancaster of Kentucky; and the tradition seems to be supported by 
a letter of Bishop Miles, in which he tells Archbishop Eccleston that 


he had known Father Lancaster from his childhood. (See note 34 of 
Chapter XVIII). 


EARLY PRIESTHOOD 159 


acquainted with her teaching and her spirit. The 
same occupation continued to demand most of his time 
at the period of which this chapter speaks. However, 
it was by no means his only work. 

We remember one or two letters of Bishop Flaget 
prior to this time, in which he says that only Father 
John B. David, rector of the diocesan seminary, and 
Father Samuel T. Wilson, provincial of the Domin- 
icans and president of Saint Thomas’ College, could 
claim the privilege of remaining at home on Sundays. 
The rest of the clergy had to play the part of mission- 
aries, which took them out for the days on which the 
faithful were obliged to hear mass. This statement 
confirms the old tradition that Father Tuite, even 
though master of novices, went to Danville or some 
other place practically every Sunday. Father Wilson 
looked after the large congregation at Saint Rose’s, 
just as Father David took care of that at Poplar 
Neck, where the seminary was situated.” 

Things had changed little since that time, for the 
increase of the clergy had not kept pace with that of 
the Catholics, ever all too scantily provided with spiri- 
tual shepherds for their souls. Thus Father Miles had 
many missionary labors in addition to those connected 
with the college. Now that Father Tuite was growing 
old, he no doubt sought to lighten his burdens by taking 
his place as often as circumstances permitted. Doubt- 

25 This seminary was also called Saint Thomas’, which, we are sure, 
occasioned a few statements in Hon. Ben. Webb’s Centenary of Catholicity 
anent the early education of Fathers Abell and Durbin that seem cer- 
tainly to be erroneous. A very definite tradition in the province assures 
us that the fathers at Saint Rose’s attended Danville from the time Bishop 
Flaget arrived in Kentucky until the death of Father Wilson; that 
Father Tuite gave up the place when he became superior; and that this 
action was the beginning of the misunderstanding of which we shall 


speak in another chapter. They resumed charge of the place years later, 
and continued it until 1865. 


160 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


less, whenever possible, he went on the longer journeys 
in order that the older man might be less exposed to 
fatigue and the headaches to which he is said to have 
been subject. 

Tradition assures us that the young priest soon 
acquired a reputation as a good confessor. White and 
black, young and old, the sinner as well as the devout 
found in him one who could wisely direct their souls 
and soothe their consciences. This repute, together 
with his prudence, kindness, patience, and open char- 
acter, brought him crowds of penitents from near and 
far. Indeed, from the outset, Saint Rose’s became a 
favorite place for confessions to which the people 
flocked from the surrounding parishes. It still remains 
such, largely because of the example set by Bishop 
Miles and his teachers. Possibly that not a few are 
today in the enjoyment of eternal bliss is due to his 
fidelity in this all-important part of a priest’s vocation.”° 

While perhaps he could not be called an orator from 
the point of view of fervid flights of eloquence or 
rounded sentences—which, in fact, would neither be 
expected from nor suited to one of his character— 
Father Miles was soon considered a good speaker. He 
had a splendid voice; a clear, distinct pronunciation; 
a pleasant delivery; graceful gestures. His sermons 
were well prepared, instructive, solid and orderly; his 
language simple, the words so chosen as not to be over 
the heads of his audience. He was a man of fine phy- 

26 In the days of Bishop Miles’ young priesthood Saint Rose’s was one 
of the very few country places where mass was said every Sunday. 
Thither, on those Sundays on which there were no services in their own 
churches, the people flocked from the adjoining parishes for many miles 


around. This circumstance also brought the fathers almost innumerable 
confessions. 


BAKUYOEURIEST HOOD 161 


sique, full six feet in height, with an attractive coun- 
tenance, a face at once strong and kindly. ‘Traditions 
are still extant about how the people loved to hear him 
preach. ‘They are no less distinct about him being 
an interesting conversationalist, the charm of whose 
personality was accentuated by his rich barytone voice 
and well-modulated cadences. It was a treat to hear 
him sing mass. 

Even at this early period our Friar Preacher dis- 
played a tact for dealing with non-Catholics, which ere 
long became one of the characteristics of his priestly 
ministrations. ‘They esteemed him, as well as admired 
him, and went in numbers to hear him preach. He was 
unusually successful in making converts. However, 
we shall have occasion to touch on this topic time and 
again in the course of our pages; for, impressed with the 
lofty dignity of the ministry and his vocation of saving 
souls, he zealously devoted himself to this sublime work 
no less than to the spiritual advancement of those 
within the fold of the faith. 

Two notable events in the Catholic history of 
Kentucky, with which the tradition of Saint Joseph’s 
Province connects the subject of our narrative in a 
useful way, fall within the period covered by the 
present chapter. The one is the consecration of the 
first cathedral in the state; the other the first episcopal 
consecration west of the Alleghany Mountains. 
August 8, 1819, Bishop Flaget consecrated the Cathe- 
dral of Saint Joseph at Bardstown. Seven days 
later, the feast of the Assumption, he consecrated the 
Right Rev. John B. David his coadjutor in that sacred 
edifice. In the latter ceremony, it should not be 
omitted, the saintly prelate was assisted by Fathers 

12 


162 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Charles Nerinckx and Wilson, O.P.* 

Bishop David, an accomplished musician, not infre- 
quently presided at the organ for high mass. But 
he could not well perform this office at the time the 
cathedral was consecrated, for he had to preach a 
sermon in explanation of the ceremonies. At his own 
consecration, of course, it was impossible for him to be 
the organist or to direct the choir. Accordingly, so 
tradition at least tells us, the services of Father Mules 
were sought and obtained in this capacity for both of 
these notable occasions. Doubtless he enhanced the 
music with his own superb voice, and thus contributed 
not a little to the solemnity of the events. 


27 This extraordinary favor was conferred on Fathers Nerinckx and 
Wilson because there was no bishop west of the Alleghany Mountains 
to be had for the ceremony. It was, of course, given them by virtue 
of the apostolic authority of the Pope. 


CHAPTER VIII 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 


AccipDENT and fortune are often the circumstances 
that determine the course of events, whether in the 
lives of mdividuals or in the progress of a society. 
As the poet expresses the same idea: 


‘All states have changes hurried with the swings 
Of chance and time, still riding to and fro.” * 


Such was the situation of the little American province 
of Friars Preacher, of which Father Miles had now 
become a leading member, at the present period of his 
busy career. Much depended on the way in which 
the pendulum should swing. 

The founders of Saint Joseph’s Province had fore- 
seen that the only way of guaranteeing a continuation 
of their labors in behalf of the Church in the new west 
was to begin with the establishment of a novitiate which 
would supply them with properly home-trained and 
educated priests. They saw slight prospects of get- 
ting a sufficient number of subjects, if even any, from 
abroad—and perhaps felt that those to the manner 
formed would be better suited for work in America. 
Father Fenwick’s letters show that one of the dominant 
ideas in the founding of Saint Thomas’ College was 
to obtain candidates for the Order and means for 
their support. 

Bishop Flaget and Father John B. David must have 

1 Quar_es (Francis), Emblems, III, 1. 

163 


164 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


gone to Kentucky with similar ideas as regards the 
diocese, for both of them had had experience in teach- 
ing, as well as received their baptism of missionary 
labors. Wilson, we know, possessed the confidence and 
affection of the bishop. At least one of the early dioc- 
esan consultations was held at Saint Rose’s. We have 
also seen several letters in which the holy prelate calls 
the learned Friar Preacher the shining light of his 
diocese.” Doubtless the scholarly divine advised a sem- 
inary, and perhaps a college also, as the one hope of 
success for the new diocese, for he was a single- 
minded man without guile. 

However this may be, a seminary and college were 
soon uppermost in the bishop’s thoughts. He wisely 
brought from France to Kentucky three or four 
candidates for the priesthood; and when he obtained 
possession of the historic farm left to the diocese by 
Thomas Howard, thither he tranferred his students 
from Father Badin’s residence, and opened a seminary 
under Father David. 'The new institution he named 
Saint Thomas’, in honor of the patron saint of the donor 
of the plantation. This was in the fall of 1811. From 
this date the saintly prelate anxiously looked forward 
to the time when he would be able to erect a cathedral 
in Bardstown, the episcopal seat, and to locate the sem- 
inary and start a college in its immediate vicinity.° 

God gradually prospered these zealous designs. The 
cathedral was dedicated in the summer of 1819; the 


2“Fulgens lumen dioecesis meae,” and “fulgens lumen in dioecese mea” 
are the expressions that he uses. 

3 SpaLpING, Early Catholic Missions, and Life of Bishop Flaget; Wess, 
op. cit.; How ett, St. Thomas’ Seminary—all passim. It is sometimes 
said that the bishop took four seminarians with him to Kentucky; but 
letters published by Spalding in the works referred to incline us to 
believe that the number was three. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 165 


advanced seminarians took possession of their new 
quarters at its side some weeks later; the college opened 
early in 1820—all placed under the patronage of 
Saint Joseph. Before the close of the same year 
(1820), Father Wiliam Byrne started Saint Mary’s 
College in what is now Marion County.* The college 
at Bardstown was eighteen miles northwest from that 
of Saint Thomas conducted by the Friars Preacher; 
Saint Mary’s ten or eleven miles south of that of the 
Dominicans. 

What is now to be recorded, we trust, will merit no 
adverse criticism. It not only falls within the sphere 
of our narrative, but is even demanded in order to 
round out the life-story of Nashville’s first bishop, for 
he is said to have taken an active part in the affairs. 
We censure no one; defend no one. Perhaps, indeed, 
no one deserves censure, whilst no one needs defense. 
All were within their rights, as far as they went. 
Doubtless, too, all sought the greater glory of God, 
each striving to do his best in accordance with his own 
light. 

A steady stream of tradition, distinctly borne out 
by two letters of Father Wilson,” tells us that the 
difficulty of three colleges being able effectively to 
operate in such close proximity, especially in a new 
and thinly settled state, was foreseen; and that Bishop 
Flaget wanted Father Wilson to convert Saint Thomas’ 
into a mere preparatory school for the candidates of 
his Order, so that the two newer diocesan institutions 
might enjoy a larger patronage. The saintly prelate 

4SpatpinG, Life of Flaget, pp. 211 ff; and Early Missions, pp. 265 ff. 


5 Letters to Father Hill (in Rome), March 6 and September 11, 1820 
(Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. IV, No. 138). 


166 THE /PATHER OF THE CHURCH IN (TENNESSEE 


was emphatically an honest man, perhaps almost over- 
zealous for that portion of his diocese which lay within 
the State of Kentucky. Far be it from us, therefore, 
even to suspect that in this matter he acted from any 
motive other than what he felt was for the broader good 
of religion. Still, it must be admitted, his request 
was one to which Wilson could not readily accede. 
Father Miles is said to have opposed it strenuously. 

When the matter became public, the people of Union 
County, whence Saint Thomas’ College had drawn a 
goodly number of students, offered to raise a sub- 
scription in order to help Wilson and his associates to 
purchase land and erect a similar institution there in 
leu of Saint Thomas’ College. Their generous offer 
was accepted, for it seemed a good way out of the 
difficulty, especially in view of the splendid soil in 
Union County, the wealth of its inhabitants, and its 
distance from the other two educational establishments. 
A fertile tract of twelve hundred acres was secured 
on Lost Creek, near Uniontown, and partially paid 
for by the people. To this plan, however, Bishop 
Flaget, acting, as Father Wilson believed, under the 
influence of Bishop David, refused to consent.® ‘Thus 
the precipitous purchase, made no doubt in good faith 
as a happy solution of the dilemma, left matters in 
statu quo. 

But Saint Rose’s found itself burdened with a 
heavy debt; for the fathers felt that they were no less 
bound to refund the money contributed in Union 

6 Letters as in the preceding note. The original deed for this land 
(Recorder’s Office, Frankfort, Kentucky) bears the date of September 
13, 1819. It is from Joseph and William Trotter to (Rev.) Samuel L. 


Montgomery, who acted for Saint Rose’s. Saint Mary’s College had not 
been started at the time, but preparations for it were under way. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 167 


County for this purchase, than to raise that which 
still remained due on it. Meanwhile the pall of the 
financial crisis of 1819 and subsequent years fell upon 
the country. Banks failed right and left. Land and 
produce became almost valueless. The fathers were 
unable to collect the bills due to them for their educa- 
tional work, whilst few could afford to send their sons 
to college.’ Thus the number of students at Saint 
Thomas’, as was but natural, declined to perhaps half 
of what it had been. 

Here we may briefly interrupt our narrative in order 
to explain an assertion; of Father Badin anent the 
Dominican college. Kentucky’s apostle left the state in 
the spring of 1819, when the discussion about its being 
limited to a preparatory school for the Order must 
have been at its height. Doubtless he took it for 
granted that Father Wilson gave in to the wishes of 
his friend, Bishop Flaget. It is only in this light that 
we can understand the venerable missionary’s statement 
in L’Ami de la Religion et du Rot, December 8, 1819, 
to the effect that Saint Thomas’ had been closed, and 
that the fathers were confining their educational work 
to their novitiate. Certainly the assertion is erroneous.” 

Meantime Bishop Flaget explained to Father Wil- 

7 Wilson’s letters as in note 5 above. 

8 Father Badin says nothing about the cessation of the college in his 
Origine et Progrés de la Mission du Kentucky, published in Paris, in 1821; 
and a Latin postcript to the pamphlet (over the names of Fathers Wilson 
and Tuite clearly indicates that it was then in operation). Bishop Spalding 
(Early Missions, page 160) says that it closed in 1819 or 1820. He most 
likely followed Badin’s first statement. A close scrutiny of Doctor Spald- 
ing’s Early Missions and Life of Bishop Flaget shows that he was too busy 
a man to take the time necessary to look up dates. At least, he is often 
inexact in them. The whole drift of the present chapter shows that he was 


in error, when he says that the fathers closed Saint Thomas’ because they 
found educational work incompatible with that of the missions. 


168 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


son that he had opposed the Union County project 
because he had written to Rome asking that a Domini- | 
can be appointed bishop of Ohio, and that the missions 
of that promising state be placed in charge of the 
fathers. This information, together with prospects of 
recruits from abroad, turned all thoughts towards the 
north. Wilson determined, if at all possible, to retain 
the land near Uniontown until the return of good 
prices, so that the proceeds from it might be used in 
the purchase of a like property for the support of a 
college which they hoped to start in the vicinity of 
Cincinnati.2 HZtowever, committed to the work of 
education which they loved, they maintained Saint 
Thomas’ College in operation; and it continued to draw 
a fair quota of pupils, despite the hard times and its 
two younger competitors. 

One is pleased to see that this difference of opinion 
did not disturb the amicable relations between Bishop 
Flaget and Father Wilson. Indeed, in the report of 
his diocese which the humble prelate sent to the Laity’s 
Directory for 1822, we find a brief paragraph which 
clearly shows the error of Father Badin and Bishop 
Spalding as regards the time when Saint Thomas’ 
closed its doors. Having spoken of his seminary and 
other affairs of his diocese, Doctor Flaget proceeds to 
say: 

The Dominicans have likewise established a college in Ken- 
tucky, which is greatly frequented, and promises to be of great 


benefit to the Diocese. Dr. Wilson is at the present time president 
of it, a gentleman of known piety and talents.!° 


9 Letters to Hill as in note 5 above. In view of the fact that what 
is called “the French period” in the American Hierarchy was just then 
beginning, one can hardly blame Father Wilson’s fears lest a Frenchman 
should be appointed bishop of Cincinnati. 

10 Page 110. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 169 


Among the greatest handicaps with which the fathers 
had to contend was a scarcity of members. Candidates 
seem to have come in fair numbers, but they did not 
persevere. They soon found the trials too severe for 
them. In his letter of September 11, 1820, to Hull, 
Father Wilson says the convent has even less difficulty 
in sustaining subjects than in finding those who are 
brave enough to bear the burdens of its life. None 
came from abroad, and none remained for profession 
for some years after Father Nicholas D. Young pro- 
nounced his vows. In this way, it was necessary to 
employ lay teachers, no less than to continue the old 
system of having the more advanced students assist 
in the instruction of those in the lower classes. 

Ever faithful Father Miles’ zeal and_ practical 
mind made him one of the provincial’s principal sup- 
ports in all these perplexities. He was called “‘the 
power behind the throne;” but this was said of him 
with no tinge of malice. As a matter of fact, he exer- 
cised his influence with such fine Judgment, and in so 
admirable a spirit of fairness and disinterested zeal 
for the better good, that it neither aroused jealousy 
nor evoked adverse criticism. 

Albeit, for the reasons given, the future of their 
institution must have at times appeared gloomy, the 
fathers appear to have toiled on with a buoyant spirit. 
Possibly they were confident that God, in whom they 
placed their trust, would bless their efforts in His 
own good time. At the present juncture these hopes 
seemed on the point of realization. Thomas James 
Polin, John Hyacinth McGrady, and James Vincent 
Bullock had made their professions. ‘Thomas H. Mar- 
tin had almost compieted his novitiate, whilst Charles 


170 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Pius Montgomery, a younger brother of Father Samuel 
Montgomery, had received the habit. Charles Dom- 
ine Bowling and Joseph Thomas Jarboe were 
postulants still in the college, but had almost completed 
their classical course. All these were young men of no 
little promise; so had they been with the fathers long 
enough for them to be assured of their characters. 

The outlook grew still brighter in the early fall of 
1821, when Father John A. Hill, Brothers John 
Thomas Hynes, and John Baptist Vincent De Ray- 
maecker, Mr. Daniel Joseph O’ Leary and two or three 
other postulants, whose names we have not been able 
to discover, arrived from Europe.** They were the 
first foreign recruits. Hynes was ready for ordi- 
nation; the same is true of De Raymaecker, although 
he had not pronounced his vows, having the singular 
experience of making a part of his novitiate under Hill 
at sea while on the journey to America. O’Leary 
and the others were students in theology. Martin and 
McGrady, mentioned above, had about completed 
their divinities; Polin was not far behind them. 

Thus the prospects of a more rapid increase in num- 
bers and better equipment for educational work had per- 
haps never appeared so glowing. Doubtless no one 
rejoiced more in these promises than the subject of our 
narrative. If only Father Hill had been kept, at least 
for a while longer, in the ranks of the subjects, they 
would likely have materialized. An excellent priest 

11 Rey. F. P. Kenrick to Bishop Rosati, New York, August, 1821, and 
Bardstown, Kentucky, September 24, 1821 (Saint Louis Archives) ; Father 
John A. Hill to same, Springfield, Kentucky, September 29, 1821 (ibid.). 
During their stay in Rome and on their journey thence to the United 


States a friendship arose between Fathers Hill and Kenrick which had 
its part in the trouble to be recounted in the next chapter. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 171 


though he was, zealous, splendidly educated, and an ora- 
tor of the first rank, the premature placing of him in 
authority combined with other circumstances of which 
we shall soon speak to engender division, rather than 
strength, and in the end to close Saint Thomas’ College. 

About the time of the arrival of the above recruits 
bulls were received from Rome erecting the Diocese of 
Cincinnati, and appointing Father Edward D. Fenwick 
its first bishop. ‘There could then be little doubt but 
that the proposed college in or near the new episcopal 
city would soon be a reality. However, to Father Fen- 
wick his nomination was as unexpected as a bolt out of 
the clear. Genuinely humble, he buried himself in the 
forests of Ohio in the hope of thus escaping the dreaded 
responsibility; and when he was finally discovered it 
required all the authority of his superiors in order to 
induce him to accept the miter.” As stated in his life: 

Father Fenwick was raised to the episcopacy by Bishop Flaget 
on the octave of the Epiphany, Sunday, January 13, 1822. The 
consecration, the second of the kind performed west of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, took place at Saint Rose’s, a church that the 
friar himself had erected. By papal dispensation two of his col- 
leagues, Fathers Wilson and Hill, assisted at the ceremony which 
was carried out with all the pomp and splendor possible in the 
backwoods of Kentucky. Right Rev. John B. David, coadjutor 
of Bardstown, preached the sermon. Attracted in part perhaps by 
the novelty of the occasion, but especially by the love and esteem 
in which the well-known missionary was held, people came from 
far and near to see him enrolled in the Church’s episcopacy. 

12 Fenwick, Kentucky, February 9, 1823, to Archbishop Maréchal (Bal- 
timore Archives, Case 16, W 1); Rev. John A. Hill, Kentucky, November 
21, 1821, to a friend in Europe (London Catholic Miscellany, I, 327-328) ; 
same, Kentucky, January 27, 1822, to Father Benedict Olivieri, Rome, 
(Propanganda Archives, Scritture Originali, Vol. 929); Spatpinc, Early 


Missions, pp. 157-158, and Life of Bishop Flaget, p. 217; O’DaAntEL, Life 
of Fenwick, pp. 242-243. 


172 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Fenwick was now a bishop. But possibly no Christian 
prelate was ever confronted with greater destitution than that 
which Cincinnati’s first ordinary had to face. He had taken the 
vow of poverty, and he had practised it with scrupulosity. He had 
not a farthing that he could call his own. The poor convent from 
which he had been taken could help him but little. Fortunately, 
the people of Saint Rose’s Parish, though themselves poor, agreed 
to take up a subscription in his behalf. In the meantime, while 
the funds necessary to take him and his retinue to the episcopal 
city were being thus collected, the new prelate conferred holy 
orders on a number of his confréres in the same church in which 
he himself had been so lately consecrated. Fathers Thomas H. 
Martin, John Hyacinth McGrady, J. T. Hynes, and J. B. V. De 
Raymaecker, the last two of whom have already been mentioned, 
were raised to the priesthood. 

Bishop Fenwick had made it a condition of accepting the miter 
that Father Wilson, the provincial, would go to Cincinnati in the 
capacity of vicar general. Accordingly, having obtained between 
four and five hundred dollars in paper money from the people of 
Kentucky, and got together whatever vestments, chalices or other 
articles his convent could spare, the saintly prelate started for his 
episcopal city, accompanied by this learned divine and Fathers 
Hill, Hynes, and De Raymaecker. The journey, which must have 
taken several days, was made in an old-fashioned cart, then an 
indispensable possession of our pioneer backwoodsmen, drawn by 
two horses in tandem fashion—all a gift of Saint Rose’s to his 
lordship. The weather was rainy; the roads, lately cut through the 
forests, were rough and muddy. In places they consisted merely 
of trees felled and laid side by side over marshes and low places. 
More than once the conveyance, carrying both the episcopal suite 
and their luggage, broke down. The travellers, obliged to swim 
the Kentucky River which was swollen by recent rains, were in 
great danger of losing their lives. 

The evening before they reached their destination, the ecclesias- 
tical caravan halted at a roadside hostel for supper. As it was 
Friday, the bishop instructed the lady of the house to prepare any- 
thing she pleased for their meal, except meat. Surprised at such 
instructions from travellers so way-worn, she suggested that per- 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 173 


haps they would like to have chicken. On being told they would 
not take even this dish, she asked: “‘Are you of those people whom 
they call Jews, and who crucified our Saviour? Or are you 
Romans?” ‘To which the holy prelate kindly replied: “No, my 
good lady, we are Christians. We are Catholics; but some people 
call us Roman Catholics, because the head of our Church resides at 
Rome.” Another source of amusement to the pioneer innkeepers, 
especially to the younger ones, was the sign of the cross made by 
the travellers before and after eating. 

The meal, considering the day and the times, was all that could 
be desired, and was enjoyed by the wayfarers. A bountiful piece 
of pie which all, except the bishop, thought was made of prunes, 
formed the last portion. The famished priests had begun to eat 
this dish with evident delight, when they noticed that his lordship 
had set his plate aside, and was amused at the others. Asked why 
he had done so, he replied with a smile: “It is mince. But con- 
tinue. I have every reason for dispensing you.” 

It was on Saturday evening, apparently March 23, that the 
travellers, after many difficulties, arrived at Cincinnati. Putting 
their horses and cart in the stable of the hotel, they went to Michael 
Scott’s for supper; but the unexpected arrival of so many made 
it necessary to send out for their first meal in the episcopal city. 
As Scott’s home was not large enough to accommodate his guests, 
together with his own family, an empty house within the municipal 
limits was rented for Saturday night and Sunday. ‘The building, 
it would seem, had but one room. Fortunately it was a spacious 
chamber. Here the little band of exhausted ecclesiastics slept 
soundly on pallets spread on the floor. 

On the morrow, no doubt, mass was said in this room and the 
Scott home, as well as in the little suburban church of which we 
have spoken. It was at this last place, of course, that the papal 
bull erecting the new See of Cincinnati was read by Father Wilson, 
and that Bishop Fenwick was installed in his diocese with “humble 
ceremony and silent panegyric.’”’ He needed none other.!* 


These noteworthy events, one may rest assured, had 
13 Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 243-246, The sources whence the in- 


formation contained in this quotation is drawn are given in the footnotes 
on the same pages. 


174 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


no more keenly interested a participant than Father 
Miles. But we must not overlook the part which the 
Father of the Church in Tennessee took in the ceremony 
of the consecration of the apostle of Ohio. As Mr. 
Webb says, Father Miles was regarded as “quite a 
musical prodigy.” "* Accordingly, he was chosen to 
direct the music for the occasion, and presided at the 
organ. His melodious voice no doubt could be heard 
above all the others. It is said that the church could not 
afford even standing room for the crowd that came to 
witness the event, and that all, whether clergy or laity, 
were delighted with the way in which he acquitted him- 
self of his part in the program. ‘The tradition concern- 
ing the whole occurrence is among the many sweet 
memories that cluster around the walls of the venerable 
institution and the life of Father Miles there. 

Bishop Flaget was accused by more than one of his 
brethren in the hierarchy of what may be termed zealous 
selfishness for that part of his diocese contained in Ken- 
tucky. Rarely did he station any of his own diocesan 
clergy elsewhere. With the possible exception of Fa- 
ther Savine, the Canadian priest who accompanied him 
to Bardstown in 1811, and seems to have labored for a 
while in Illinois,’® the missionaries in that state and 
Michigan were either there before he became bishop, or 
were borrowed from New Orleans or Saint Louis. The 
same is true of Indiana until 1823, when the Rev. John 
Leo Champonnier was stationed at Vincennes, remain- 
ing the state’s sole missionary until 1827, or later. In 
1833, however, the year before the erection of the See 
of Vincennes, we find Father L. Picot in that city and 


14 Centenary of Catholicity, p. 207. 
15 We have never been able to learn Father Savine’s baptismal name. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON Woe 


Father Simon Lalumiere at Oak Ridge, Davis 
County.” 

Father Edward D. Fenwick had begun his labors in 
Ohio before Kentucky became a bishopric, whilst the 
Dominican provincial sent Father N. D. Young to 
Fenwick’s aid in that part of Bishop Flaget’s charge. 
Tennessee, it must be admitted, was sadly overlooked; 
for, with the exception of the temporary sojourn of the 
Rev. James Cosgreve at Nashville, in 1828, no priest 
was stationed in that state until it was erected into a 
diocese.“ Not until 1843, when the Rev. Ignatius A. 
Reynolds was selected as bishop of Charleston, did the 
saintly Flaget even willingly consent that one of his 
clergy should be taken for the head of another episco- 
pal see. 

However, Webb assures us, in answer to Father Fen- 
wick’s ardent plea for spiritual aid, on the day of his 
consecration, Doctor Flaget consented that Francis V. 
Badin, then in deacon’s orders, should transfer his alle- 
giance to the Diocese of Cincinnati.’*> Father Anthony 
Ganilh enlisted in Fenwick’s cause of his own accord. 
Francis Badin was raised to the priesthood in Cincin- 
nati on Holy Saturday, April 6, 1822, his ordination 
being the first in Ohio, just as that of his older brother, 
Father Stephen T. Badin, had been the first in the 
United States. Immediately afterwards the younger 
Badin and Ganilh proceeded to Detroit, Michigan, 

16 Catholic Almanac, 1833, pp. 41-42; ALerpinc, The Diocese of Fort 
Wayne, p. 18, and The Diocese of Vincennes, pp. 82-97; Annales, III, 
TAL 

cane Banner and Nashville Whig, March 28, 1828. The Umted 
States Catholic Miscellany, May 17, 1828, gives this priest’s name as 
Cosgrave. If he were French, Cosgreve is probably correct. Otherwise, 


his name was likely Cosgrove. 
18 Op. cit., p. 207. 


176 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


where they were to help the Rev. Gabriel Richard, over- 
burdened with labor since the return of the Revs. John 
Bertrand and Philip Janvier to New Orleans.” 
Before Bishop Fenwick’s consecration, a matter of 
importance had been got under way at Saint Rose’s that 
demanded Father Wilson’s attention. From the time 
they settled in the west—even prior to Fenwick’s de- 
parture from England—the fathers had wished to es- 
tablish a community of Dominican Sisters in America, 
but had been deterred from any attempt to put the pious 
design into execution by the lack of means to insure its 
success.”” Possibly convinced that he had not long to 
live, Father Wilson seems to have felt that, unless the 
project were undertaken now, it might never be realized. 
At just what date can not today be determined, 
Father Wilson obtained Bishop Flaget’s approbation 
of the enterprise. ‘Then the authorization of the Order’s 
head, the Most Rev. Pius Maurice Viviani, was se- 
cured.” Backed by these credentials, the learned divine 
launched the sacred and long-contemplated project by 
an eloquent sermon on the beauty and heroism of a voca- 
tion to the religious life in the sisterhoods of the Church, 
which he preached at Saint Rose’s a Sunday or two after 
Bishop KFenwick’s consecration. ‘The beloved Friar 
Preacher made a strong plea for postulants to enable 


19 Life of Fenwick, pp. 247-248, and passim. See also sources given 
there. 

20 Several of Fenwick’s letters to Father Concanen, and one at least 
of Concanen’s to Fenwick, touch on this subject. 

21 Father Viviani was vicar general of the Order from 1820 to 1823. 
In one of the books of his administration we read: “Die 24 Martii, 1821. 
Auctoritate Apostolica Nobis commissa, conceditur facultas Patribus 
Provinciae Nostrae Kentucki fundandi Collegii pro Tertiariis Ordinis 
Nostri in eadem Provincia Kentucki et Ohio.” (General’s Archives, IV, 
268). See also Minocur, Pages from a Hundred Years of Dominican 
History, pp. 42 ff. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 177 


him to initiate a work which he had long had at heart. 
He painted in roseate colors the blessings which the sac- 
rifices and labors of those who should thus give their 
lives to the service of God would bring not only upon 
themselves, but also upon the congregation, the State of 
Kentucky, and even the American Church at large. 

Tradition tells us that Father Wilson’s discourse pro- 
duced a deep impression. It would seem that he set a 
day on which any young ladies who might feel disposed 
thus to consecrate themselves to the Divine Master 
should call to see him at the convent. At any rate, on 
Thursday, February 28, 1822, nine young women of the 
parish offered their services for the provincial’s under- 
taking, which, in the light of the work then set on foot, 
one does not hesitate to say was inspired from on high. 
They were Marie Sansbury (later the community’s first 
superior), Mary Carrico, Mary A. Hill, Mary Sans- 
bury, Rose Sansbury, Rosanna SBoone, Judith 
McMahon, Severly Tarleton, and Molly Johnson.” 
Doubtless Father Miles’ zeal made itself felt in all this, 
for no priest was held in higher esteem by the congre- 
gation, wielded a stronger influence for good, or cher- 
ished a deeper sympathy for the pious undertaking. 

This generous response to his appeal must have re- 
joiced the heart of the founder, as well as made him 
feel that God was with him in his new enterprise. How- 
ever, he wisely determined to give his protégés a trial 
of the life they would be expected to live before invest- 
ing them with the habit of the Sisters of the Third Order 
of Saint Dominic. They were therefore located in a log 
cabin, with one room and a loft, which stood on Saint 

22 Records of Saint Catherine’s Academy, and MINOGUE as in the pre- 
ceding note. The Record, Louisville, Kentucky, May 29, 1902. 

13 


178 THE FATHER OF THE ‘CHURCH IN: TENNESSEE 


Rose’s farm about half a mile east of the convent, in 
the direction of Springfield. Father Miles was appoint- 
ed their chaplain and spiritual director. No _ better 
could have been selected. 

Meanwhile the provincial made ready for his northern 
journey for the installation of Bishop Fenwick at Cin- 
cinnati. Despite his one and sixty years of age and the 
hardships attendant on travel at that period, he hurried 
back to Saint Rose’s immediately after that ceremony 
in order to preside at another of perhaps not less beauty 
and significance, albeit simple in the extreme. The nine 
postulants for the sisterhood were at the solemn high 
mass in the parochial church on Easter Sunday, April 
7, 1822. After the services and sermon Miss Marie 
Sansbury was called to the altar railing, where, in pres- 
ence of the congregation, she was vested in the tunic of 
a Dominican Sister, over which were placed the scapular 
and veil. She took the name of Sister Angela. Never 
before had this religious garb been seen in Kentucky, 
or even in the United States. 

It is no matter for surprise, therefore, that the cere- 
mony profoundly impressed the people of Saint Rose’s 
Parish, or that it was long remembered and spoken of 
throughout the neighborhood. Later in the same day, 
no doubt in the afternoon, Father Wilson gave the 
habit to Sister Margaret (Mary Carrico), Sister Mag- 
dalen (Judith McMahon), and Sister Columba (Sever- 
ly Tarleton), in Saint Magdalen’s Chapel, as the little 
log cabin had. been named, in honor of the penitent sin- 
ner. At both ceremonies he was assisted by Father 
Miles, who had prepared all things for them, no less 
than instructed the sisters in the rubrics and constitu- 
tions.”° 


23 Records of Saint Catherine’s Academy, and MinocuE as in note 22 
above. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 179 


Doubtless the decision to defer the reception of the 
other young ladies a little longer was caused by their 
youth, which suggested the prudence of further trial. 
Meantime Miss Molly Johnson, finding that she had no 
vocation to the religious life, wisely returned to the 
world. But in her stead came Miss Elizabeth Sansbury 
(a younger sister of Mother Angela), and Miss Teresa 
Eidelen. Accordingly, in the absence of the provincial 
for reasons which will soon be seen, Father Miles him- 
self officiated at the second investiture in the little log 
Saint Magdalen’s. This was on August 3, 1822, when 
Sister Ann (Mary Hull), Sister Catherine (Mary Sans- 
bury), Sister Frances (Rose Sansbury), Sister Rose 
(Rosanna Boone), Sister Euphrasia—later Sister Mag- 
dalen (Teresa Edelen), and Sister Mary Benven (Eliz- 
abeth Sansbury) received the habit.** 

Soon, if not immediately, after the impressive cere- 
mony of Easter Sunday, Father Wilson had returned 
to Cincinnati, where important matters claimed his at- 
tention. One of these affairs was the establishment of 
a college, towards which steps had already been taken; 
for in one of the public prints of the city we read: 

We congratulate the Roman Catholicks of this city and environs 
on the arrival of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Fenwick, lately consecrated 
Bishop of Cincinnati and the State of Ohio. This circumstance 
interests not only the Catholicks but all the friends of literature and 
useful knowledge, as we understand that his intention is ultimately 
to open a school, aided by the members of his order long dis- 
tinguished for their piety and learning.’® 

Indeed, it seems quite certain that the fathers, as a 
consequence of the disfavor which Bishop Flaget now 

24 Ibid. 


29 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, March 30, 1822. See also the 
London Catholic Miscellany, 1, 475. 


180 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


manifested towards Saint Thomas’ College, had deter- 
mined to transfer this institution to Cincinnati, and to 
use the place in Kentucky merely as a convent and no- 
vitiate—perhaps eventually even to give it up altogeth- 
er, for it had not yet become hallowed by the associa- 
tions which at present render it sacred. ‘Tradition has 
it that Fathers Wilson and Miles advocated disposing 
of the convent and college structures to the sisters, and 
that this wish was the reason why they were housed in a 
cabin on the farm, and why such scant preparations 
were made for the commencement of their community. 
Nor is the motive far to seek. Sisters would be needed 
for schools and spiritual works in Ohio. While it was a 
problem whether vocations to such a life could be found 
in the newer State of Ohio, the experience of the Sisters 
of Loretto and the Sisters of Charity showed that they 
might be expected in Kentucky. 

With these purposes in view, Fathers Stephen H. 
Montgomery, John McGrady, and Thomas Martin 
were called to the north. But Bishop Flaget, vigilantly 
eager for the good of his own diocese, strongly opposed 
the measure. He even appealed to Cardinal Consalvi, 
prefect of the Propaganda, to prevent its execution. 
Strange to say, although he perhaps had no competency 
in the matter, the cardinal at once ordered that the little 
band of Friars Preacher should be divided between Ohio 
and Kentucky. Stranger still, he issued the command 
without taking the trouble either to consult their pro- 
vincial or to hear their side of the case.*° On the other 


26 The prefect of the Propaganda to the superior of the Dominicans 
in Kentucky, July 27, 1822 (Archives of Saint Rose’s Convent, Spring- 
field, Kentucky); Fenwick to Archbishop Maréchal, February 9, 1823 
(Baltimore Archives, Case 16, W. 1); Fenwick to the prefect of the 
Propaganda, April 16, 1823 (copy in Archives of Notre Dame University). 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 181 


hand, it affords no little edification to see Wilson, for 
the sake of harmony, readily obey a command that likely 
did not bind in law or conscience, even though it was 
fraught with evil consequences both to his Order and to 
the diocese of his former confrére, Bishop Fenwick. 

Father Wilson, as a result of this interference, was 
soon obliged to return to Saint Rose’s. Father Hill 
then took his place as vicar general in Cincinnati. 
However, the ill-advised ordinance of Cardinal Con- 
salvi, preventing as it did a concentration of forces, 
not merely long stood in the way of a more rapid growth 
for the American province of Friars Preacher; it was 
likewise a source of much annoyance to Bishop Fen- 
wick, and greatly impeded the progress of religion in 
Ohio. 

Fortunately, although the number of students had 
perhaps somewhat decreased because of the preoccupa- 
tions about Cincinnati, Saint Thomas’ had not been 
closed. Father Samuel Montgomery was therefore re- 
called from the missions in northern Kentucky. Father 
William T. Willett was left at Lexington only for the 
sake of his health, which would not permit him to engage 
in educational work.*’ With his diminished forces the 
provincial set himself to the reorganization of the col- 
lege in the hope that it might soon attain, if not exceed, 
its highest number of pupils. In these efforts he placed 
the greatest reliance on Father Miles, who was a tower 
of strength in all that made for good. 

—There are many documents showing Fenwick’s bitter disappointment 
at this turn of things. Cardinal Consalvi’s order reached Kentucky in 
October, 1822, just when matters were assuming shape in Ohio. 

27 Father Willett died in Lexington on May 6, 1824. For notices of 


this talented and pious friend of Bishop Miles see Spalding’s Early Mis- 
sions, p. 159, and Life of Bishop Fenwick, pp. 286-287. 


182 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Meantime, that he might still help impoverished and 
distressed Bishop Fenwick so far as he could, Wilson 
used his authority to send Father Hynes to Rome, 
where he had studied, and Father McGrady to Ireland. 
The mission of both was to obtain means and mission- 
aries for Ohio. It is a pity that Hynes did not return, 
for subsequent events show him to have possessed rare 
talents for just such work as was then needed in the 
new diocese. While he was at Rome the higher author- 
ities saw fit to send him to British Guiana, where he 
became a veritable apostle, and eventually bishop. Still 
it is not improbable that he welcomed the change for 
the reasons that follow.” 

Hardly had these two men started on their way when 
Father Hill began to disturb the even trend of affairs. 
As in Rome, while Wilson’s procurator, he had sought 
to unite the English and the American provinces of 
Friars Preacher; so now, in his capacity of vicar gener- 
al, he gained the confidence of Bishop Fenwick, and 
used his influence in order to divide the little American 
Province. He induced the postulants whom he brought 
from abroad to join him in Ohio. But there only one 
of them, the saintly Father Daniel J. O’Leary, re- 
mained for profession. 

Father Hiull’s influence, there can be no doubt, was 
the power that brought about the historic agreement 
between Father Wilson and Bishop Fenwick, on the 
eve of the latter’s journey 'to Europe in the late spring 
of 1823, for the erection of a separate province of the 

28JIn some of his letters Bishop Fenwick speaks as though he had sent 
these two priests to Europe. However, he was not their superior. Pos- 
sibly Father Wilson sent them at his request. The Annales de la Prop- 


agation de la Foi, January, 1839 (XI, 92 ff), give a sketch of Father 
Hynes’ labors in British Guiana. 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 183 


Order in Ohio independent of that in Kentucky. Fa- 
ther Miles, tradition declares, opposed the measure with 
all his might, yet in his characteristically mild and gen- 
tle way. The provincial also strongly doubted the wis- 
dom of the division; but he felt that, under the circum- 
stances, it was perhaps the best thing that could be done. 
For this reason, greatly as he disliked to do so, he with- 
stood the arguments and entreaties of his trusted friend. 

Father Tuite, though the mildest of men, yet a not 
disinterested witness in the affairs, says that the turn 
of events broke F'ather Wilson’s heart; which is no doubt 
true, for it necessitated starting anew at an age when 
most people look for a surcease from toil.” However, 
he found a source of courage in the subject of our nar- 
rative and other valiant confréres, and bravely took up 
the task. To Father Miles he entrusted the charge of 
the sisters, but helped him, as opportunity permitted, 
in the preparation of them for their work of teaching.*” 

If Doctor Wilson and Father Miles (for the latter 
may justly be styled a co-founder) had done no more 
than establish Saint Magdalen’s Community of Domini- 
can Sisters (now known as that of Saint Catherine of 
Sienna), their names would still deserve to be inscribed 
in letters of gold in the annals of our American church 
history. By natural and legal division, subdivision, and 
inspiration it has become the parent stem of various 
provinces of Sisters of Saint Dominic, whose members 

29 Letters to Father Velzi, January 23 and July 24, 1828. The dis- 
turbing tendency of Father Hill’s influence is patent from various sources. 

30 This explains why Father Miles’ name, instead of Father Wilson’s, 
appears in nearly all the earliest records of the convent. In one of his 
letters, written some years after this time, Bishop Fenwick speaks as 
if Father Hill gave the habit to the first sisters, which is certainly erron- 


eous. Likely the holy prelate, owing to the crowded works of his life, 
became confused on this matter. 


184 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


run into thousands, teach Catholic schools, conduct 
academies and colleges, and carry on works of charity 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. The 
work of the two priests, no less than their memory, still 
lives in and through these pious ladies. Everywhere 
are their names blessed.** 

Saint Thomas’ College held its own with its competi- 
tors. In fact, it prospered, considering the times. 
Father Miles rendered it efficient services, in spite of his 
care of the sisters and: his labors in the parish and on 
the missions. But Father Wilson’s course was near its 
end. God had decreed to give the great man the reward 
of his long and faithful life. He died, almost on his 
feet, May 23, 1824. Webb rightly says of him: 


Father Wilson’s administration of the foundation of St. Rose 
was in all respects admirable. He seemed to have felt in advance 
that the great coming want of the country, in respect to Catholic 
interests, would be a properly trained and educated clergy; and 


his grand idea was to make the institution over which he had been 


placed a source of supply to the ranks of the priesthood. . . .° 


[The province’s] after expansion, and the happy results of its 
foundation, now to be seen in the heart of the country, and extend- 
ing from seaboard to seaboard across its face, are to be attributed, 
in a great degree at least, to the wise direction given to the little 


31 Jt was during this eventful period of his life that Father Mules lost 
his venerable father. The precise date of Nicholas Miles’ death can 
not now be determined; but his will, dated February 27 and probated 
October 20, 1823 (Will Book E, pp. 28-30, Recorder’s Office, Bardstown, 
Kentucky), shows that he died in that year (at the age of eighty-two or 
eighty-three), and sustains the tradition that he remained active almost 
to the end of his long life. Although, in the natural course of things, 
he could ‘not have expected his father to live much longer, and must 
have realized that he had been unusually blessed in having him even to 
such an age, one is justified in the belief that so devoted a son felt the 
loss keenly. Mrs. Miles survived her husband, and is said to have lived 
several years after his demise. We could find no record of her death. 

32 Centenary of Catholicity, p. 203. 


ra ee (aso! 


7 








VER YVaR Ee Veeo ANU Eats WILSON? OO; PS sreMe 


THE FIRST PROVINCIAL OF A RELIGIOUS ORDER IN THE UNITED 
STATES, ANDSIAE FIRST. PRIESTSLOSRECELVE THE DEGREE 
OF MASTER OF THEOLOGY IN THE COUNTRY 


LAST YEARS UNDER FATHER WILSON 185 


community of St. Rose by its second [first] provincial three quar- 
ters of a century ago..... oS 

Father Thomas Wilson was fitted by nature and grace, as well as 
by culture, for the position to which he had been appointed. He 
commanded both admiration and respect, the first on account of his 
great learning and acknowledged talents, and the last because of 
his adherence to the right on all occasions, and the virtues he prac- 
ticed in the sight of men. It were impossible that between such a 
preceptor and his pupils there should not have grown up affection 
on the one side and reverence on the other. That he loved them is 
shown by his solicitude in everything that concerned them, and 
most especially in their advancement in the knowledge of divine 
things; and that he was held by them in the most profound rever- 
ence is evidenced by the fact that in their after-lives they never 
appeared weary of rehearsing his praises. . . .°4 

What he did for secular education in the congregation of St. Rose 
and far beyond its limits, and what he did for the Church in Ken- 
tucky in supplying it with zealous priests to uphold and continue 
God’s work in the land of his adoption, must in the future, as in the 
present and the past, make his name a by-word of honor among 
Catholic Christians all over the country.®*° 

As the same author says, Father Wilson was. honored 
by all with whom he came into contact. Owing to his 
merits, the representations of Father Fenwick, and the 
initial state of the province, his appointment as pro- 
vincial and prior was usque ad revocationem (until re- 
voked). So he held the position until his death—nearly 
seventeen years. No one, with the possible exception of 
Father Hill, found fault with his government; no one 
wanted any other as superior in his stead. 

More than forty years have passed since the historian 
of the Church in Kentucky penned the words we have 
just quoted, and over a century since the great Friar 
Preacher’s death. Yet his name is still “a byword of 
honor” not only in the province of the brethren which 


33 Ibid., p. 204. 34 Ibid., p. 206. 35 Ibid., p. 208. 


186 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


he helped to found, but also in the parish of Saint Rose, 
central Kentucky, and beyond. His influence is still 
felt; his memory still gives added zeal to the labors of 
one generation of confréres after another, though the 
province has grown greatly, and its members are many 
times the number of his day. 

The first provincial had no more ardent admirer, no 
truer friend, no more willing or faithful helper than 
Father Miles. Thus, while his death was deeply re- 
gretted by all, none could have felt it more keenly than 
the future bishop of Tennessee. 


CHAPTER IX 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 


SHORTLY before he left Cincinnati for Rome to seek 
aid for his impoverished diocese, Bishop Fenwick and 
Father Wilson agreed jointly to ask the General of the 
Order for a division of the little band of American 
Friars Preacher into two provinces. ‘This was in May, 
1823. One of the reasons for the step was certainly 
to obviate future difficulties between the dioceses of 
Cincinnati and Bardstown over the matter of locating 
Dominican missionary priests. Little less certain is it 
that the scheme was evolved by Father John A. Hill, 
or that his influence practically forced Father Wilson 
into such a compact." 

When Bishop Fenwick reached the Eternal City, as 
he had not made known his intention of going thither, 
the Most Rev. Joseph Velzi, Vicar General of the 
Order, was absent on a visitation of the Kingdom of 
The Two Sicilies. But Father Alexander Bardani, 
whom he had left in charge at Rome, received the re- 
quest favorably, and on January 11, 1824, issued letters 
patent for the erection of the Province of Saint Louis 
Bertrand in the Diocese of Cincinnati. He also ap- 
pointed Father Hull its provincial, doubtless at the sug- 

1A joint letter of Fenwick and Wilson to the General of the Domin- 
icans. It bears no date, but it was evidently written very shortly before 
the bishop started for Rome, at the end of May, 1823 (Archives of the 


Propaganda, America Centrale, Vol. IX). A number of documents show 
Hill’s activity in the matter. 


187 


188 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


gestion of Bishop Fenwick. Saint Joseph’s Province 
was confined to the limits of the Diocese of Bardstown. 
But, before the documents in the affair reached their 
destination, the great Wilson had passed to his eternal 
reward.” 

However, the erection of the Province of Saint Louis 
Bertrand, or the separation of the fathers in Ohio from 
that of Saint Joseph, was to become operative only in 
case the measure should be approved by a majority 
of those in Kentucky, a condition that was not fulfilled.® 
This defect, of course, vacated the entire enactment. 
Father William R. Tuite succeeded Wilson at Saint 
Rose’s, and a very definite tradition assures us that his 
stand in the matter was largely responsible for the mis- 
carriage of the division project. In this way, although 
a holy, quiet, and inoffensive man, he incurred the dis- 
pleasure of those who favored two provinces—all the 
more so because his action prevented the fathers in Ohio 
from receiving the means and property that were to go 
to them in accordance with the Fenwick-Wilson com- 
pact.* 

2 Patent erecting Saint Louis Bertrand’s Province —a copy in the 
handwriting of Father Stephen Byrne, O. P. (Archives of Saint Joseph’s 
Priory, Somerset, Ohio). Shea tells us (History of the Catholic Church 
in the United States, III, 352) that the original of this patent is in the 
Archives of Notre Dame University; but we did not find it there. Doubt- 
less Father Byrne made his copy from this before it was taken from 
Cincinnati. There are two copies of it in the Archives of the Dominican 
General, Rome—an unsigned one in Codex IV, 269, Letters 1822-1839, p. 
10; and one signed with Velzi’s name in Codex V, 26. But it seems cer- 
tain that Bardani signed the latter in Velzi’s name. Both these copies are 
dated January 18, 1824. 

3 Velzi to Tuite, August 23, 1827 (Archives of Saint Rose’s Priory, 
Springfield, Kentucky). There are several documents to this effect, but 
the original letter on the matter to Wilson has been lost. 


4 The Fenwick-Wilson letter to the Dominican General as in note 1 
of this chapter. The same appears from several documents. It should 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 189 


Father Hill, it would seem certain, received no direct 
notice from either F'ather Bardani or Father Velzi about 
the condition on which the Province of Saint Louis Ber- 
trand had been founded, and refused to take Father 
Tuite’s word for it. Quite naturally Bishop Fenwick’s 
sympathies were with Hill. Rome let the matter drag 
on for nearly four years without action. There are clear 
indications that, because of the small number of priests, 
Father Velzi himself regarded the existence of two prov- 
inces with little favor, but disliked to do anything that 
might offend Fenwick, or appear to reflect on the action 
of his own vicar. So he permitted the affair to remain 
at a standstill, not without a serious drawback to the 
interests of his brethren in the United States.° 

Father Hill had the support of Father N. D. Young, 
the bishop’s nephew. Between them they gained the 
co-operation of the Rev. Frederic Rese. Because of the 
oppressive work of the college, in consequence of the 
diminished forces brought about by the emigration to 
Ohio, Father Tuite gave up the charge of Danville and 
other missions, by which he aroused the wrath of Bishop 
Flaget.© When therefore Father Hill and his sympa- 
thizers approached that zealous prelate about the mat- 
ter under consideration, they found him in a receptive 
be noted in this connection that these documents seem to show Bishop 
Fenwick (pious, meek, and just though he certainly was) too anxious to 
get possession of the little property owned by his brethren in Kentucky. 
No doubt he was led to this by his straits, and felt that he was justified 
by the fact that most of what they had came through him. With Father 
Hill the property consideration was quite an important item. 

5° Velzi to Tuite, August 23, 1827, as in note 3 of this chapter; same 
to Fenwick April 26, 1828 (ibid.). 

6 Father William T. Willett died in Lexington, May 6, 1824, a few 
weeks before the death of Father Wilson. Father Tuite’s refusal to send 


another priest to take his place there, although he could not have been 
expected to do so, is said to have greatly angered Bishop Flaget. 


190 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


mood for their representation of the case. Through him 
the Rev. Francis P. Kenrick, a learned young priest of 
his diocese, ‘was also partly drawn into the affair.‘ 

All this, there can scarcely be any room for doubt, 
was largely responsible for a number of criticisms 
against Father ‘Tuite’s administration and his intimate 
friend, Father Samuel Montgomery. Some complaints 
were even sent to Rome by Bishop Flaget and Father 
Kenrick.> However, a study of the lives of Tuite and 
Montgomery, together with the manuscript literature of 
the day, shows these remonstrances to have been not 
only hasty, but also made with little or no reason. 

Letters, his own included, prove that the bishop’s 
piety and honesty did not always safeguard him against 
undue credence to groundless talk, or harshness in eriti- 
«ism, or lack of charity in his judgment. One whom he 
suffered to deceive him was an unscrupulous overseer 
who had. been discharged by Fathers Tuite and Mont- 
gomery, respectively the superior and syndic at Saint 
Rose’s. Fathers Hill and Young he let convince him 
that Tuite really had no authority. It seems certain 
that Hill sought to get Dominican Sisters for Ohio 
through the bishop rather than through ‘Tuite and Miles, 
although they were under the jurisdiction of the Order; 
and even that he endeavored to persuade them all to go 
to the Diocese of Cincinnati.” 

7 The facts recorded in this paragraph are shown by a number of docu- 
ments—some in the Propaganda Archives, and some in those of the prov- 
ince and Saint Rose’s Priory. Father Kenrick afterwards became bishop 
of Philadelphia and archbishop of Baltimore. 

8 There are several of these letters in the Propaganda Archives and 
those of the Dominican General. 

9 Tuite to Flaget, March 28, 1826 (?) (Archives of Saint Rose’s 


Priory) ; Hill to Fenwick, October 23, 1824 (Archives of Saint Joseph’s 
Priory, Somerset, Ohio) ; M. Johnson to same, July 18, 1825 (ibid.) 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 191 


The whole affair is an illustration of the proneness of 
human nature to bias, especially when one’s interest is 
concerned, and of the inconsistencies into which it not 
infrequently leads the best of us. Possibly it is the tra- 
dition of his part in this matter that has prevented Fa- 
ther Hill from being held by the province in the esteem 
and reverence to which his zeal, labors, virtues, and 
ability should entitle him. He did extraordinary mis- 
sionary work in Ohio, while he was universally loved 
and admired by the people. 

More than one of the interested parties sought to 
enlist the subject of our narrative on their side. But 
Father Miles was too well balanced to be drawn from 
what he belived to be his duty. Evidenty he defended 
his friend and superior, whose rights he could not but 
see had been unjustly attacked, which alone would have 
won the sympathies of a man of his character. Still 
he sought to pour oil on the troubled waters. Even 
this wiser course seems to have offended Doctor Ken- 
rick. On the other hand, Father Tuite was somewhat 
incensed because he did not take a more active part 
in his behalf, which he wrongly felt to be the result 
of ambition. Whilst the future prelate was perfectly 
content to let Father Hill have some of the sisters 
for Ohio, he stood firm against him taking the entire 
community. In this resolution he naturally had the 
support of his provincial.’® 

Father Tuite also maintained the even tenor of his 
ways. Indeed, he showed a strength that few would 
have expected of one with his mild disposition. His 
life is an apt illustratation of the old saying: “Still 


10 Tuite to Velzi, January 23, 1828, and July 29, 1828; Hill and Johnson 
to Fenwick as in the preceding note. 


192 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


water runs deep.” With the faithful co-operation of 
Miles, Montgomery, and Polin, then the only priests 
in the community, he effected much good in the College 
of Saint Thomas as well as in the congregation. Stu- 
dents came to the school in goodly numbers as well from 
a distance as from the state and parish. 

In this connection we distinctly recall meeting one 
of its former professors in the distant past, I’ather 
Joseph T. Jarboe, then almost an octogenarian, who had 
just retired from his long labors in 'Tennessee in order 
that he might end his days at Saint Joseph’s, Somerset, 
Ohio. On his way north he stopped for a week or more 
at Saint Rose’s for a last visit at the place where he 
had entered the Order, made his studies, and spent 
many years of his life. He was in high spirits and fine 
reminiscent mood; his mind good; his memory excellent. 
More than one evening he entertained the novices with 
recollections of his early days there. Besides, we had 
the good fortune to be appointed to look after his 
needs. Again, when he left, we were delegated to take 
him in a buggy to the home of his nephew who lived 
about eleven miles distant. 

On all these occasions, for his mind seemed full of the 
subject, the patriarchal old priest discoursed at length 
on Bishop Miles, Fathers Tuite and Samuel Mont- 
gomery, and the college which, he said, had a large 
attendance for that day. It was an excellent school. 
Some splendid men, both Catholic and non-Catholic, 
were educated in it. They were a credit to every 
profession. He loved the work of teaching, but the 
effort to combine it with his own studies so undermined 
his health that it was feared he would not live until his 
ordination. Fathers Charles D. Bowling, James V. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 193 


Bullock, and Charles P. Montgomery, the last named 
afterwards provincial and nominated bishop of Mon- 
terey, California, also came in for much _ praise. 
Bowling was one of the most ascetic men he ever knew; 
Bullock the most extraordinary linguist with whom he 
had come into contact. Like Jarboe himself, they were 
professed clerics, but helped in the college. Excessive 
work kept them “as thin as rails.”” Quite a number of 
lay professors were likewise employed in the institution. 

Saint Thomas’ College had almost as many students 
as Saint Joseph’s and Saint Mary’s together until a 
French priest came up to Bardstown from Louisiana 
with his whole school.** One of the most unfortunate 
things that ever happened to the province was the 
closing of Saint Thomas’ by Father Mufios. When 
he spoke of this action the aged clergyman’s cheeks 
reddened as if with indignation. Bishop Miles was 
president of the college during Father Tuite’s term 
of office. 

It would appear, in fact, that, when better times 
returned, Saint Thomas’ bade fair soon to outstrip its 
palmiest days. The United States Catholic Miscellany 
of November 10, 1827, in an account of the jubilee ser- 
vices given at Saint Rose’s in the previous September, 
says: “Contiguous to it [that is, the convent, | is erected 
a school of public instruction, the number of whose 

11 This was the Rev. B. Martial who had conducted a school in a 
country house of the Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans. He came up to 
Bardstown in 1825, and brought fifty-four students with him. In 1826 
he went to Rome and took with him a letter to the prefect of the Prop- 
aganda from Bishop Flaget, in which the zealous prelate says that this 
increase of students had fortunately put his college on its feet. See also 


Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, I, No. V, p. 74, and III, 184; and 
SPALDING, Early Missions, p. 280. 


14 


194 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


pupils is daily increasing.” Similarly, “A Brief Ac- 
count” (Breve Narrazione) of the jubilee, which Bishop 
Flaget sent to Rome, states that there are four colleges 
in the diocese, one of which is conducted “by the Do- 
minican Fathers who belong to the Convent of Saint 
Rose,” where many youths are educated.” 

Apostolic work kept pace with that of education. 
In truth, Saint Rose’s was the model parish of the 
diocese. The Hon. Ben. Webb but states a plain fact, 
when he says: 

The congregation of St. Ann, the first over which pastoral 
supervision was exercised by the Dominican Fathers, and that of 
St. Rose, by which it was succeeded in 1808, and which is still 
subject to their care and guidance, has at no time been regarded 
otherwise than as a model congregation of Catholic christian souls. 
As early as the year 1826 [1827], on the occasion of the jubilee 
preached that year in Kentucky, it exceeded all others in the 
State in the number of those who approached the sacraments of 
penance and the Holy Eucharist. Whereas the highest number 
of communicants in any one of the other congregations of the 
diocese, on the occasion referred to, was but four hundred and 
ninety-five, (that of Holy Cross,) no fewer than eight hundred 
received holy communion in the single church of St. Rose.1* 

Futhermore, the Breve Narrazione referred to above 
reveals the almost incredible fact that the communions 


at Saint Rose’s nearly doubled those at the cathedral, 


12 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. IX. In the Annales as 
in the preceding note, III, 174 and 197, mention is also made of the 
Dominican college, showing it in operation in 1826 and early in 1828. 
Father Kenrick likewise speaks of it in a letter to the prefect of the 
Propaganda, October 27, 1827, and says that it is under the direction 
of Father Miles (Propaganda Archives, Vol. IX, as above). All this 
clearly shows the error of Badin and Spalding, when they tell us that 
it was closed in 1819 or 1820. The same error is found in Father J. A. 
Burn’s The Catholic School System in the United States (p. 178). He 
took the date from Spalding. 

13 Op. cit., p. 205. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 195 


and were well-nigh one fifth of the entire number 
received in the one and twenty parishes of the diocese 
on that notable occasion.’* The correspondent of the 
United States Catholic Miscellany, who signs himself 
“J. M.,” declares: “The solicitude of the pious people 
to gain the spiritual treasure of the Jubilee caused them 
to anticipate the sun’s morning appearance, and to wait 
until after he had hid his lustre, that they might have 
access to the confessors.” Nearly eight hundred, he 
says, approached the sacred table by the end of the 
week. As it was impossible to hear the confessions of 
all, it was necessary to defer the completion of the 
jubilee until a later date; which must have carried the 
number of communions to considerably over eight 
hundred.*” 

The Miscellany’s accounts of the jubilee exercises 
in the various churches, about all from the pen of “J. 
M.,” show clearly that at none of them did the people 
manifest such piety, fervor, and earnestness, or turn 
out in proportionately such great numbers, as at that 
of Saint Rose. Indeed, their spirit of religion so im- 
pressed Bishop Flaget that it moved him to write to 
Bishop Fenwick: 


I have just returned from an apostolic excursion, during which, 
aided by several of my young missionaries, I gave the jubilee in 
three parishes. The first one was that of Saint Rose, where some 
eight hundred persons received holy communion. ... I declared 


14 Spalding (Life of Flaget, p. 260) says that over six thousand per- 
sons received communion during the jubilee which is evidently an exag- 
geration; for the Breve Narrazione, following parish by parish, gives the 
number as four thousand three hundred and fifty. This document is 
in the handwriting of Father F. P. Kenrick who everywhere helped to 
conduct the jubilee. 

15 Edition of November 10, 1827. “J. M.” was likely an assumed name, 
for we have not been able to discover any priest in the Louisville Diocese 
at that time to whom it may apply. 


196 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


publicly that I had not expected to find in this parish such 
fervor as it had manifested; and that I was greatly consoled in 
that I could bestow only the highest praise on the piety of the 
faithful and on the zeal of the priests who directed them.'® 


This splendid manifestation of faith was a sponta- 
neous outpouring of the heart. Its reason is not far 
to seek. Father Tuite and his associates (Fathers 
Miles, Samuel Montgomery, and Thomas J. Polin) 
were zealous and holy priests, notwithstanding the 
uncharitable strictures that cropped out in the unpleas- 
ant relations to which reference has been made. ‘They 
understood their people; their people understood them. 
True shepherds of souls, they were ever at their post 
of duty, which brought out the parish in numbers for 
all spiritual exercises. Anent their leader, who bore 


the brunt of the ill-will, Mr. Webb writes thus: 

Of Father William Raymond Tuite and his labors the writer’s 
knowledge is limited to the simple fact that he was a most 
amiable and praiseworthy priest. ... He remembers having 
heard him spoken of by a friend, years ago, as one toward 
whom naturally tended the affection of his parishioners of the 
congregation of St. Rose, and as having lived a life filled with 
merits, and having died the death of the just.1? 


Thus the misunderstanding and unpleasantness did 
not chill the zeal or ardor of the fathers for the salvation 
of souls. As a matter of fact, they never labored harder 
or with greater fruit than at this very time. Cognizance 
was taken of their apostolic toil not merely in America, 
but even in Europe. Of how Father Nicholas Sewell, 
provincial of the Society of Jesus in England, was 
impressed by the reports of their spiritual endeavors 
may be judged from his letter to Father Enoch Fen- 
wick, S.J., of Georgetown College, written when the 


16 Letter dated October 10, 1827 (Notre Dame Archives). 
17 Op. cit., p. 208. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 197 


agitation was at its height. “The Dominicans [he says ] 
are doing great things for the glory of God in Ohio, 
Kentucky, etc.; let us emulate their example and renew 
the zeal of our forefathers.” ** 

Similar in tone is a communication which appeared 
in the Catholic Advocate of April 24, 1847. It covers 
the period of which we are speaking, and shows how 
the memory of the zeal of these early fathers was 
treasured by those who came under its influence. ‘The 
language reveals a good mind at the same time that it 
indicates an education which must have been received 


at Saint Thomas’. 

In your number for the 3rd of April [says the writer] I read 
a communication upon “Catholic Institutions, Convents, Schools, 
etc., in Kentucky”, which called forth many serious reflections. 
The writer of that article has taken me back, in thought, not 
only to the days of my youth, but to the very place of my nativity. 
O how long will the scenes and reminiscences of my childhood 
last! I have lived nearly half a century, and yet I am unable 
to forget the good old land of my early home. 

Yes, St. Rose is a venerated name, which, though I could live 
for centuries to come, I cannot forget. For it was within her 
sacred walls that I received that salutary Christian instruction, 
at the hands of pious Fathers Wilson, Tuite, Miles, Willett, and 
Polin, which I hope, with the grace of God, never to forget. . . .19 
It was there that I used to go to early Mass, when I wished to seek 
a reconciliation with an offended God, in the holy sacrament of 


18 Letter from Stonyhurst (?), England, and dated September 28, 1824 
(Archives of the Maryland-New York Province of Jesuit Fathers, Case 
204, K 14).—Doubtless some of the writers of the uncharitable letters 
of this time afterwards regretted their actions. This is certainly true of 
Father Francis P. Kenrick. 

19 We are inclined to think that the Advocate’s correspondent con- 
founded Father Willett with Father Samuel Montgomery. Willett did 
not remain long at Saint Rose’s after his ordination. Montgomery spent 
more time there. Father Polin seems to have been ordained shortly after 
Father Wilson’s death; and this fact shows that the Advocate’s com- 
munication covers the period of which we treat in this chapter. 


198 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


penance. Never, never, can I eradicate from my remembrance the 
holy counsels of Father Polin. He was the most holy man I ever 
knew. And no one, I will venture to say, ever knelt at his feet 
and did not go away a better man. 

It was there, too, that I learned the little that I know of 
sacred music, under the tuition of the Right Rev. Bishop of 
Nashville. O what satisfaction did I then enjoy, on Saturday 
and Sunday evenings, when the young people would assemble at 
church, with the good Bishop, then a Priest, at our head, and with 
the organ, we would sing the joyful hymns and anthems appro- 
priate to the time. It was there, too, that I used to go on Sunday 
evenings to hear the Fathers of St. Dominic chaunt, or sing the 
Vespers. In fine, it was there that every facility was afforded to 
the sincere Christian for the practice of his duties as such, and 
all efforts were made to reclaim sinners from the evil of their 
WAYS.) 6 7s ts 

[Signed] A.” 
Paducah [ Kentucky], April 11, 1847.” 

After the death of Father Wilson, the subject of 
our narrative seems to have acted as master of novices. 
But he held the position for only a short time, for it was 
given to Father Polin soon after his ordination. As the 
reader may readily imagine, the zealous priest found 
ample employment in the ministerial and educational 
duties attached to the parish of Saint Rose and the Col- 
lege of Saint Thomas of Aquin. Yet to tell of his labors 
along these lines at the present period of his life were 
largely to repeat what has been recounted in previous 
chapters. Suffice it then to say that in all things he 
was one of Father Tuite’s mainstays, even as he had 
been one of Father Wilson’s—and then pass on to 
another phase of his apostolate which had come into 
prominence at this time. 

Shortly after the ordination of the apostle of ‘Ten- 
nessee, one of the ministers in Springfield, possibly 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 199 


aroused by the doctrinal sermons that drew crowds to 
Saint Rose’s, commenced a series of violent attacks on 
the Church and everything Catholic. At first, little 
attention was paid to his harangues by the fathers. 
However, when they began to engender bitterness be- 
tween the Catholics and their neighbors, as well as 
otherwise to disturb the tranquillity of the neighbor- 
hood, the priests were obliged to take up the cudgels, no 
less in the interest of peace than in their own defense 
and that of the Church. Gradually the trouble maker 
was reduced to silence by the masterful refutations de- 
livered, some in the courthouse in Springfield and some 
from the pulpit at Saint Rose’s. Then he tried the 
same tactics in Bardstown, where he came into conflict 
with the Right Rev. John B. David.” 

Naturally, Fathers Wilson and Tuite, because the 
senior clergy, were the leading spirits in this contro- 
versial bout. Yet it has been handed down to us that 
Father Miles, though ordained only a short time, played 
a no inconspicuous part in the affair. Doubtless he was 
guided in these efforts by his mentor, Father Wilson, 
to whom he had recourse in every uncertainty. Be this 
as it may, the discussions not only brought him into 
prominence as an able controversialist, but also pre- 
pared the way for other fruitful labors along some- 
what similar lines. 

Although he had commenced such work prior to the 
present period of his life, he now became especially 
active in lecturing on the Catholic faith to mixed 
audiences in and around Springfield. Huis favorite 
method of carrying on this apostolate was that of 


20 See introduction to Bishop David’s Vindication of the Catholic Doc- 
trine concerning the Use and Veneration of Images, etc. 


200 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


question and answer. Father Samuel Montgomery, 
whenever they could arrange to be together, proposed 
the stock objections against the Church and the diffi- 
culties in her tenets. Father Miles solved them. His 
clear, logical mind, happy expression, and urbane man- 
ner stood him in splendid stead in these endeavors. 
Perhaps not less helpful was the care with which he 
avoided whatever might offend any part of his au- 
dience. He knew well that harsh words, sarcasm or 
ridicule often darken-the mind, but seldom enlighten 
it; that wounded feelings tend rather to close than 
to open the heart. For this reason, he took particular 
pains to show, not animus, but kindness in his refuta- 
tion of un-Catholic tenets. Little wonder that crowds 
went to hear him. 

Tradition tells us that Father Miles’ gently contro- 
versial discourses resulted in a number of conversions. 
Some there were who advised him to be more pointed in 
his remarks; still he remained firm in his conviction that 
moderation is far the wiser policy. “Quietly sow the 
seed,” he would reply; “the harvest will come later.” It 
was only natural that the knowledge of the good thus ac- 
complished should spread. ‘The old fathers of the prov- 
ince used to maintain that it inspired Bishop Flaget with 
the idea of conducting the jubilee of 1826 and 1827 
along the same lines, and that Father Miles took the 
part of objector at the time of the exercises at Saint 
Rose’s. However this may be, the project gave the Rev. 
I’. P. Kenrick, then only a few years ordained, an ex- 
cellent opportunity to employ his superior talents and 
learning for the benefit of religion in Kentucky.” 


21 Tradition tells us that the clever Propaganda student declared that 
Father Miles, during the exercises of Saint Rose’s, gave him some of the 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 201 


Despite the pressure of his other occupations and the 
exigency of his professional duties, Father Miles did 
not overlook the needs of the community of sisters 
which he had helped to bring into existence. After 
Father Wilson’s death especially, he was their guiding 
light, and the staff upon which they leaned in their many 
trials. When their first school, started in a former 
still-house that stood on the farm given them by Mother 
Angela Sansbury’s father, became too small, he en- 
couraged that valiant woman to erect a brick structure 
which would serve for both an academy and a convent. 
Similarly, when their small means became exhausted, he 
persuaded Bishop Flaget to permit them to solicit 
means to carry the enterprise to completion.” 

But the scanty contributions received proved wholly 
inadequate for the project. Father Miles, shocked at 
the idea that these spouses of Christ should be thus 
thwarted in their good work, or obliged to continue in 
almost uninhabitable quarters, then obtained permission 
from Father Tuite to sign a pledge by which he made 
himself personally responsible for the payment of the 
money which the sisters should have to borrow in order 
to finish the edifice. The signature, though required 
by those who lent the means, was a mere matter of form, 
for there could be no doubt that his charges would be 
able to pay their debts by degrees. Pages from a 
Hundred Years of Dominican History assures us that 
he was ever their “true friend and counsellor.”** He 


most difficult objections that he had to answer the whole time of the 
jubilee. 

22 Flaget to Miles, August 25, 1826 (Louisville Archives) ; MrInocuE, 
Pages from a Hundred Years of Dominican History, pp. 53 ff. 

23 Fenwick to the Most Rev. Joachim Briz, Dominican General, October 
10, 1829 (copy in Saint Rose’s Archives) ; MINoGUE, p. 62. 


202 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


instructed them, trained them in the art of pedagogy, 
drilled them in the rules and constitutions of the Order, 
taught them the aims and purposes of their vocation. 

However, the future prelate’s long years of faith- 
ful labor in Kentucky were now near their close. 
Father Tuite’s term of office would soon expire. The 
same was true of Father Hill’s provincialship in Ohio. 
Father Joseph Velzi, the General, it would appear, 
wrote to both to notify them of this fact, but the letter 
for Kentucky miscarried. Hill replied on January 12, 
1827, and seems to have sent his answer by the Rev. 
Frederic Rese who went to Rome on business for 
Bishop Fenwick.” 

The document presses Velzi to co-operate with the 
bishop’s plan for a Dominican prefecture apostolic in 
Ohio. As the decree of the division of the fathers 
into two provinces had not taken legal effect, in default 
of an approval by a majority of the brethren in Ken- 
tucky, Hill would have the enactment formally 
annulled, the Province of Saint Joseph suppressed, 
and a new one organized under the name of Saint 
Louis Bertrand, with headquarters in Ohio. He now 
thinks that it would be better both for religion and for 
the Order if all the fathers were placed under one ju- 
risdiction, as their united efforts would be more effective 
for good.” 

Meantime the General determined to give the fathers 
a voice in the selection of their provincial. On August 
23, 1827, therefore, he wrote to authorize Father Tuite, 

24 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. IX); Life of Bishop 
Fenwick, pp. 338 ff. 

25 There is every reason for believing that the proposed Ohio pre- 


fecture was the work of Father Hill. Such an idea fits in with his way 
of dreaming, while it is totally foreign to Bishop Fenwick. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 203 


as the superior of the oldest house, to convoke the 
brethren in chapter and to forward to him the name of 
the one whom the majority should judge the best fitted 
for that position. The same document declared that, 
as the former division of the province had not been 
accepted by the greater number of the members in 
Kentucky, which had been stipulated as necessary for 
the instrument to become effective, the Province of Saint 
Louis Bertrand had never enjoyed any legal exis- 
tence; that in the future there should be only one prov- 
ince; and that it should retain the name of Saint 
J oseph.*° 

Before the appointment of a new provincial could be 
made, Fenwick’s petition for a prefecture apostolic in 
Ohio, which was carried to Rome by Father Frederic 
Rese, brought together Cardinal Capellari and Arch- 
bishop Caprano, respectively the prefect and the sec- 
retary of the Propaganda, and Father Velzi. This 
affair, in conjunction with the disagreements mentioned 
earlier, culminated in the appointment of Bishop 
Fenwick as head (or commissary general) of the 
province, the letters patent of which bear the date of 
May 25, 1828.°° Certainly no holier man could have 
been selected. Yet the action could scarcely be pro- 
nounced wise. Apart from its extra-constitutionality, 
it placed the bishop in a most delicate position; while, 
pressed as he was for means and missionaries in his 
diocese, he could hardly be expected, or even able, 

26 Archives of Saint Rose’s Priory, Springfield, Kentucky. As the prov- 
ince did not yet have three convents, the right of appointing a provin- 
cial vested in the hands of the Master General. 


27 Copy in Archives of Saint Joseph’s Priory, Somerset, Ohio. See 
also Life of Bishop Flaget, pp. 53 ff. 


204 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


always to strike a just poise between its rights and 
those of the Order of Preachers. 

Doubtless there were those who, quite naturally, 
preferred to have the reins of authority in the hands 
of another than the bishop, though he had been one of 
their number. ‘Tradition tells us that, could an elective 
chapter of all the brethren have been held, Father Miles 
would have been chosen for the position by practically 
a unanimous vote. Yet, because of the high esteem 
and love in which the province’s founder was held, not 
a voice seems to have been raised against his appoint- 
ment. Every one knew that he had not sought the new 
dignity and onus, as well as that the choice of him for 
the place was much against his wish. 

Shortly after the receipt of the letters patent of this 
extraordinary appointment, which has few parallels in 
the history of the Order, Bishop Fenwick set out for 
Kentucky to visit Saint Rose’s. While there, August 
21, 1828, he forwarded to Cincinnati Father Raphael 
Munios’ appointment as prior to succeed Father Tuite.” 
The fact that the document is in the handwriting of 
Father Tuite reveals the good-will of that humble re- 
ligious, speaks well for his spirit of obedience, and 
shows, even were there no other proof, that Mufios was 
not sent to Saint Rose’s for the purpose of re-estab- 
lishing discipline as Bishop Spalding, evidently 
deceived by some letters of his predecessor, was led 
to believe.” 

Father Mufios’ appointment, as a matter of fact, 
was largely intended as a pacific to Bishop Flaget; 


28 Archives of Saint Rose’s Priory, Springfield, Kentucky. 
29 Life of Bishop Flaget, p. 288. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 205 


for, in spite of the fruits which he had witnessed of 
Father Tuite’s zeal, he still cherished a bias towards 
the venerable Friar Preacher. Mufios was the aus- 
terest of men. He mortified himself in the extreme, 
often taking the discipline, it is said, until the blood ran 
to his heels. He was a Master of Sacred Theology; 
had been a confessor to the royal family of Spain, a 
member of the regal chapter and a synodical examiner 
for two Spanish dioceses; was widely known as a zeal- 
ous priest of the most exemplary character and an 
eloquent preacher.®® Moreover, he had been an effi- 
cient missionary in Ohio for three years. Surely, 
thought the vicar provincial, Bardstown’s prelate will 
find no fault with such a man at the head of the 
institution. 

Although no one could have foreseen it, the choice 
of the Spanish priest for prior proved singularly un- 
fortunate. His ways and ideas did not harmonize with 
those of his American brethren. He did not believe 
that the work of secular education fell within the limits 
of the vocation of a Friar Preacher. ‘Thus, for he 
was a man of strong will, his appointment as superior 
sounded the death-knell of Saint Thomas’ College. 
Albeit he must have been fully aware of Bishop Fen- 
wick’s desire to establish similar institutions at Cincin- 
nati and Canton, Ohio, if not even another at Saint 
Joseph’s, near Somerset, in the same state, Father 
Munios’ first step on his arrival at Saint Rose’s was to 
suppress that with which the Province of Saint 
Joseph had started. The only explanation of why 


30 Mufios’ testimonial letters signed by Ferdinand M. Pantossa, chaplain 
to Ferdinand VII, king of Spain (Archives of Saint Rose’s). 


206 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Bishop Fenwick permitted the reckless deed to be 
carried out is that he hoped it would enable him the 
sooner to realize his designs for his own diocese. 

The sentiments aroused in the fathers at large by 
this act of the Spanish prior can not be better expressed 
than in the words of the annalist of the English Prov- 
ince. On the suppression of its College of the Holy 
Cross, Bornheim, Belgium, whence sprang that in 
Kentucky, he wrote: “May God forgive, whoever they 
were, the authors of a counsel so pernicious to the 
province. They would have committed a lesser evil, 
had they reduced the convent to ashes; for such a loss 
would have been reparable, whilst this injury can never 
be repaired.” ** Such were now the feelings that filled 
the breasts of the American brethren. 

None could have regretted Father Mufios’ ill-advised 
action more deeply than the Father of the Church in 
Tennessee. Saint Thomas’ had become as the apple of 
his eye. There had he attained the object of his heart’s 
holiest aspirations. He had given the institution many 
of the best years of his life. Keenly did he realize the 
good that had come from the college, and the drawback 
entailed in its closure. Possibly, indeed, its suppression 
gave him the greatest shock that he ever experienced. 

Meanwhile Father Hill, whom Bishop Fenwick re- 
garded as his most efficient missionary, died at Canton, 
Ohio (September 3, 1828).* Father Tuite was sent 

31 Patmer, Life of Cardinal Howard, p. 132. “Condonet ipsis Deus, 
quicumque authores fuere consilii Provinciae adeo perniciosi; damni mi- 
nus attulissent, si conventum in cineres reduxissent; damnum enim illud 
reparabile, hoc numquam reparari potest.” 

32 For Fenwick’s appreciation of Hill see Annales de la Propagation 


de la Fou, III, 298-299, and IV, 506-507. An English rendition of por- 
tions of the bishop’s letters is given in Life of Fenwick, pp. 345-346. 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 207 


to take his place; whilst Father Miles became pastor at 
Zanesville, in the same state, in order that Father 
Stephen H. Montgomery might help at the Cathedral 
in Cincmnati. Father Samuel Montgomery was 
called to Saint Joseph’s, near Somerset, Ohio, for the 
missions in that vicinity. 

Out of joint with the needs of the young American 
Church, Father Mufos had no sooner closed Saint 
Thomas’ College than he turned his thoughts towards 
the suppression of Saint Magdalen’s Community of 
Dominican Sisters. Since in Spain he had seen only 
enclosed nuns of the Order, he felt that the active life 
of those in America was in contradiction to its true 
spirit. Furthermore, their hardships astounded him, 
and he could not understand why they should undergo 
such unspeakable trials and privations for the educa- 
tion of young girls. He refused to give the sisters 
mass, or to let confessions be heard in their chapel; 
which, of course, obliged them, as well as their pupils, 
to go to Saint Rose’s for the sacraments and divine 
services. Nay, it left them without the Blessed Sacra- 
ment, the very source of the joy, strength, and conso- 
lation of the religious life. 

Curious as it may seem, he pressed them to seek a 
dispensation from their vows and return to the world, 
until at least, should they persevere in their wishes, 
they could begin a community under more favorable 
auspices. Bishop Fenwick intervened, possibly at the 
request of Bishop Flaget. Father Mufios then reluc- 
tantly gave the sisters mass on Sundays, but he would 
yield no further. Finally, when he discovered their 
debt and that Father Miles was sponsor for it, he used 


208 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


this circumstance in order to frighten the vicar provin- 
cial over to his views. Doctor Fenwick became anxious 
about the situation, and he shrewdly determined to make 
use of it for the double purpose of settling the debts of 
the sisters and of taking the community to his diocese. 
However, he soon discovered his error. Father Munos 
was then recalled to Ohio. Father S. H. Montgomery 
took his place in Kentucky.”” 

Father Mufios’ administration at Saint Rose’s re- 
flects not the least discredit on him as a priest or 
religious. He was zealous ad unguem, and practised all 
the mortifications of the fathers of the desert. In his 
native land he might have made the best of superiors; 
for, after all, he was a man of tender heart. In Amer- 
ica it turned out otherwise. Nevertheless we should 
not overlook the probability that the excessive penances 
and labors, which brought on his death, may have 
incapacitated him for the position which he held in 
Kentucky. He died in the odor of sanctity at Cincin- 
nati, July 18, 1830, mourned by the entire city. Ohio 
had no more zealous or tireless missionary; the poor 
no truer friend.** 

Tradition, which seems indubitable, assures us that 

33 Flaget to Fenwick, January 16, 1829 (Archives of Saint Rose’s 
Priory) ; Fenwick to the Most Rev. Joachim Briz, Dominican General, 
October 10, 1829 (copy, ibid.) ; MinocuE, op. cit, pp. 59 ff. 

34 United States Catholic Miscellany, August 14, 1830; Catholic Tele- 
graph, May 4, 1848—The Miscellany says: “He had laboured on the 
Ohio missions for nearly six years with the zeal of an apostle. His 
pleasure consisted in explaining and inculcating the principles of the 
catholic faith; and, tor that end, he spared neither time nor pains. Sur- 
rounded by children and others destitute of religious instruction, he 
would spend weeks in the cabins of the interior to remove ignorance 
and replace it by the light of revealed truth. In the city of Cincinnati, 


where he chiefly resided, the poor knew him as another good Samaritan, 
who never passed them by, without administering all the relief which 


FOUR YEARS UNDER FATHER TUITE 209 


Father Miles, by word of mouth before he left Ken- 
tucky, and by letters after he went to Ohio, was the 
good sisters’ chief support and counsellor in their period 
of sore trial. He advised, nay, urged them not to yield 
in their rights; told them that their resistance, which, 
however, should be respectful, would not be disobe- 
dience; promised them that, with prayer and patience, 
God would see them happily through the trouble. So 
it happened, and the zealous Friar Preacher saw in it 
the divine approbation of the work which he had helped 
to initiate. Doubtless his influence had its part not 
only in convincing Bishop Fenwick of his mistake, but 
also in inducing him, in 1830, to establish a branch of 
the community at Somerset, Ohio, which has since 
grown into a prosperous province. 

Thus Tennessee’s first bishop was connected with 
Saint Thomas’ College from its commencement until 
its closure—a period of about twenty years. During all 
this time students attended it not merely from every 
part of Kentucky, but also from far north, south, and 
west. None toiled harder or more faithfully in the in- 
stitution than he; none were better beloved by its pupils, 
through whom the benefits of his good influence were 
carried in all directions. His work at Saint Thomas’, 
together with the part that he played in the establish- 
ment and conservation of our first community of 
his condition afforded, and their necessities required. 

“The tears of a large and pious assembly, on the day of his interment, 
proclaimed aloud that the widow had lost a friend; the orphan an advo- 
cate; religion one of its fairest ornaments; and the diocese of Cincinnati 
one of its most useful missionaries. His memory will live in the grateful 
and pious remembrance of the numerous friends, who deplore his loss; 


while their children shall be taught to unite with them in fervent ejac- 
ulation for the soul of his departed spirit. M[ullon].” 


15 


210 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Dominican Sisters, entitles him to a distinguished place 
among the early Catholic educators of the United 
States. In Kentucky, whose Church has had no more 
zealous priest, even though he did not carry his piety 
on his sleeve, his name should never be forgotten. 


CHAPTER X 
MISSIONARY IN OHIO 


THE great State of Ohio, although more favorably 
situated than that of Kentucky, was slower to attract 
the English-speaking settler. Until a few years prior 
to the French and Indian War, the territory now em- 
braced in that commonwealth seems to have been 
regarded somewhat in the nature of a buffer space 
between the Briton on the east and the thinly scattered 
Gaul to the west, albeit both the French and the Eing- 
lish eventually laid claim to its fertile plains. From 
the close of the American Revolution, when that 
country became a part of the United States, until 1796, 
the hostility of the Indians, abetted by the British at 
the north, caused the stream of home-seekers from the 
Atlantic seaboard to flow towards the lands south of 
the Ohio River. 

There appears to be little room for doubt that the 
French were the first white race who set foot on the soil 
of Ohio. Like the Spanish, they regarded their explora- 
tions almost as much in the light of a means of carrying 
the word of God, the knowledge of Christ, and the way 
of salvation to the benighted aborigines as in that of 
an effort to enlarge the domain of their king abroad. 
With them, as with the Spanish, ever went the priest. 
Indeed, not infrequently the zeal of the missionary to 
christianize the Indian led him to outstrip the explorer 

211 


£12 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


and colonizer, and to prepare the way for further prog- 
ress and conquest. 

With the French along the Great Lakes were Fran- 
ciscan Recollects, secular priests, Sulpicians, and mem- 
bers of the Society of Jesus. As the uppermost parts 
of Ohio lay along the line of the westward march of 
their countrymen, it is higly probable that some of 
these missionaries entered the state in search of souls 
at an earlier period than is now known. ‘The Jesuits 
were both the earliest and the most numerous of the 
pioneer priests in those northern parts. History in- 
dicates that they were also the first to sow the seed of 
the Gospel in what is now, in point of population, the 
fourth commonwealth in the Union. Still there is no 
document to show the presence of a Catholic mission- 
ary there before 1749, when Father Joseph Bonnécamp, 
S.J., accompanied Celeron de Bienville on his expedi- 
tion to lay claim to the territory for France. On this 
occasion Bienville’s travels were a hurried work of 
political expediency, and nothing indicates that the 
priest performed any ministerial functions among the 
Indians, though he must have said mass for his 
companions." 

However, such spiritual labors were not slow to 
follow. According to Mr. Shea, Father Armand de la 
Richardie, of the same order, erected ‘“‘the first shrine 
of Catholicity within the present limits of Ohio” about 
1751. ‘The little wigwam of a church stood on the site 
now occupied by the City of Sandusky. Fathers 

1 SuHeA, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, III, 330; 
Houck, The Church in Northern Ohio (edition of 1903), I, 2-6; Lamorrt, 


Archdiocese of Cincinnati, pp. 4 ff. See also Vol. I of Shea’s history 
and Life of Archbishop Carroll, passim. 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 213 


Bonnécamp (mentioned above) and Nicholas Potier are 
said to have followed their confrére, and to have also 
labored among the red men along the southern shores 
of Lake Erie* Unfortunately the vicissitudes of war 
all too soon drove these zealous missionaries from their 
newest field of harvest in what is now the near-west. 
The French and Indian War broke out in 1754. At 
first, it was largely a religious strife, and a conflict 
between the British and French colonists. In 1756, the 
mother countries, these two nations having now become 
engaged in war, took up the quarrel. Despite his 
smaller numbers, success attended the Gaul in the begin- 
ning of the struggle; but in the end the tide turned in 
favor of the Briton. The earliest triumphs of the 
English were in the west, and through them the Catholic 
missionaries just mentioned were obliged to withdraw 
into Canada. Quebec fell on September 18, 1759, deci- 
ding the fate of the Gallican possessions in North Amer- 
ica. By the Treaty of Paris, signed February 10, 1763, 
France not only ceded to England her claims to the 
Ohio Valley, but also surrendered the whole of Canada. 
From the time of the departure of the Jesuits until 
the arrival of Father Peter Joseph Didier, the pioneer 
Benedictine in the United States, at Gallipolis, Ohio 
probably saw no Catholic clergyman. This was in 1790. 
He came to take spiritual charge of the ill-planned and 
unfortunate Scioto Colony. Although a pious and 
zealous priest, his labors there were of short duration— 
not more than two years. He built no church. Find- 
ing the people of the colony discontented, unruly, and 
deeply imbued with the principles of the French Revo- 
lution, the follower of Saint Benedict soon despaired 


2 See note 1. 


214 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of accomplishing any permanent good among them, 
and possibly became downcast because he had no one 
to administer to his own soul. For this reason, he 
journeyed on to Missouri, where he toiled in the cause 
of Christ until his death.* 

Fathers Michael B. Barriere and Stephen T. Badin, 
it will be remembered, stopped at Gallipolis in 1793, 
while on their way from Baltimore to the missions of 
Kentucky. But they tarried only three days in the 
place.* 

The next missionary who, as far as can be ascertained 
from records, exercised the ministry in Ohio was the 
Rev. Edmund Burke. He was a native of Ireland, 
aman of note, and a priest of the Diocese of Quebec. 
In the Treaty of Paris, September 18, 1783, Great 
Britain ceded all the territory south of the Great 
Lakes to the United States; yet, under futile pretexts, 
she continued to hold the forts in that part of the 
country. Even as late as 1795 she erected Fort Miami 
on the Maumee, near the present Perrysburg, Wood 
County, northwestern Ohio. The presence of the 
British soldiers brought Father Burke to that locality, 
for the occupation of these northern lands by them ob- 
scured the correct boundary lines between the dioceses of 
Quebec and Baltimore. However, Father Burke re- 
turned to Canada with the forces of England the 
year after Fort Miami was built.° 

3 SHEA, Life of Archbishop Carroll, pp. 481-482; Gumtpay, Life of Arch- 
bishop Carroll, pp. 395-404; Catholic Historical Review, IV, 415 ff (“The 
Gallipolis Colony,” by Rev. L. J. Kenney, S. J.) 

4Bapin (Un Témoin Oculaire), Origine et Progrés de la Mission du 
Kentucky, p. 16. 

5 SHEA, Life of Carroll, pp. 474-480; Houck, op. cit., pp. 6-7; GuILpAy, 


Life of Carroll, p. 698; Lamott, Archdiocese of Cincinnati, pp. 20-21; 
O’DaniEL, Life of Fenwick, p. 192. After leaving Ohio Father Burke 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 215 


After the Treaty of Greenville, in 1795, and the with- 
drawal of the British soldiery, in 1796, with the 
consequent cessation of danger from the Indian and 
of uneasiness caused by the presence of a foreign enemy, 
the tide of immigration into Ohio grew steadily. In- 
deed, it soon assumed enormous proportions, for the 
report of the state’s fertile lands now turned the stream 
of home-seekers towards the north. At first, they were 
principally from New England; but it was not long 
before they began to flow in from many parts of the 
United States and even from the Old World.° 

Among the early colonists there were doubtless a few 
Catholics of whom there is no trace. As often happens 
under similar circumstances, the most of them must 
have lost the faith. Perhaps, with the exception of a 
brief visit of Father Badin at Gallipolis in December, 
1807, not from the time of Father Burke’s departure, 
in 1796, until 1808 did a priest enter the limits of Ohio, 
although its population had grown by leaps and bounds, 
and the territory had been erected into a state as early as 
1802. Jacob Dittoe, a “Pennsylvania German” of Al- 
satian descent, was an instrument in his coming; the 
missionary, it will be recalled, was none other than 
Father Edward D. Fenwick, who went from the mon- 
astery in Kentucky where the subject of our narrative 
was then domiciled.’ 
became titular bishop of Sion and vicar apostolic of Nova Scotia. He 
died in Halifax in 1820. 

6 RANDALL and Ryan, History of Ohio, Ill, 4 ff; Howe, Historical Col- 
lections of Ohto, passim. 

7 For the letters of Jacob Dittoe to Archbishop Carroll begging for a 
priest see Life of Fenwick, pp. 194 ff. Father Badin in a letter to Carroll, 
begun in Pennsylvania, December 17, 1807, and completed at Bardstown, 


January 7, 1808, says: “On Christmas day I officiated at Gallipolis, where 
I found still a spark of faith. That settlement has much declined since 


216 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


From that year (1808) until 1816, Father Fenwick 
could do no more for the Catholics in these northern 
parts than visit them at the most twice in a twelve- 
month; but from 1816 he gave them his entire time, find- 
ing lodgment wherever he could. Late in 1817, he was 
joined by his nephew, Father Nicholas D. Young. 
Because of their poverty and the stress of their mission- 
ary labors, the two ambassadors of Christ could find 
neither the time nor the means to build a home for 


I visited it first; but they assure me that there are many Irish Catholic 
families in the vicinity” (Baltimore Archives, Case 1, I 5). A letter 
of appeal, discovered since the appearance of Fenwick’s Life, was also 
sent to Baltimore in behalf of some Catholics who had come to Ohio 
from the “Eastern Shore”, Maryland. It is signed by Whaland Goodee 
and Major Philips. 
“February Ist, 1807. 

“State of Ohio, Ross County, Chillicothe. 
“To the Rev. Mr. Carroll, 
“Dear Sir :— 

“We join our hands as one man in supplication to you, desiring a 
priest, as there is no teacher of our Church in this part of the country; 
and if it be convenient for you to send us one, we will do everything 
that is reasonable to support him. We have made no calculation of what 
might be collected yearly, as we did not know whether we could be 
supplied or not. Neither can we give a true account of the number of 
Catholics, but as nigh as we can come, [it] is betwixt 30 and 40 which came 
from the Eastern Shore; and, I suppose, numbers from other parts which 
I am not acquainted with. Dear Sir, if you would be so kind as to make a 
trial and send a priest, there is nothing [which] would give us more 
pleasure on account of our children as well as ourselves. Please write 
as soon as possible. 

I am yours with Respect, 
Whaland [Goodee—torn off] 

(Ibid. Case 10, I 6). and Major Philips. 

The fact that Father Fenwick found no Catholics, except three families 
near Somerset, on his way through Ohio in 1808, and that Bishop Flaget’s 
diary of a similar journey in the fall of 1812 mentions only two Catholic 
families near Chillicothe and two or three individuals of the faith in 
the city itself, indicates that these Catholics must have soon gone else- 
where. Possibly they went to Kentucky that they might enjoy the con- 
solations of their religion. 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 217 


themselves or a temple of prayer for the people until 
near the close of 1818. However, on December 6, 
that year, they blessed and opened the mother church 
and convent of Ohio—Saint Joseph’s, about two miles 
from Somerset, Perry County. Both structures were 
quite diminutive, and of hewn logs; but they were the 
birthplace and the cradle of Catholicity in one of the 
greatest of our American commonwealths.® 

Fenwick is the father of the Church in Ohio, and the 
apostle of the state; Young its Paul. The missionaries 
traversed and re-traversed the territory in every direc- 
tion. Saint Patrick’s, a small, barnlike frame building 
just outside the city limits of Cincinnati, was appar- 
ently opened for use, though perhaps not dedicated, on 
Easter Sunday, April 11, 1819. Saint Mary’s, Lan- 
caster, it would seem, had been made ready for divine 
service somewhat earlier in the same year. Next in 
order, about 1820, came a brick warehouse, purchased 
and fitted up by John S. Dugan, in Zanesville, a town 
destined to become the center of the second field of 
labor assigned to the subject of our narrative.” 

Meanwhile, the report that there were priests in Ohio 
brought Catholics, principally Irish and Germans, into 
the state in ever increasing numbers.” June 19, 1821, 
Cincinnati was erected into an episcopal see. [*ather 
Fenwick became its first incumbent, but his consecra- 
tion did not take place until the following January. 

8 Life of Fenwick, passim. 9 Life of Fenwick, passim. 

10 Bishop Fenwick speaks in more than one of his letters of the 
great number of Irish and German Catholics flocking into Ohio. The 
Germans predominated. Quite a number of German descent also came 
in from Pennsylvania; while not a few descendants of the old English 


Catholics in Maryland emigrated from that state. In the latter half of 
his episcopate many French settled in Stark and surrounding counties. 


218 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Athough oppressed with poverty of every kind, the 
anxious prelate was especially bewildered for want of 
missionaries. During his journey abroad for help, it is 
true, he secured Father Raphael Mufios, of the Order 
of Preachers, and three secular priests—the Revs. 
Frederic Rese, (later the first bishop of Detroit, Mich- 
igan), John Bellamy, and Peter J. Dejean; while, 
shortly after his return, he had the happiness of ordain- 
ing Father James Ignatius Mullon for the diocese. 
Bellamy and Dejean he had to despatch at once to. the 
aid of Father Gabriel Richard in Michigan, whence 
the Rev. Anthony Ganilh had departed. Now 
(August, 1828), Mufios was sent to Kentucky. 
Father Hill died at Canton a few weeks later; and 
Father John TT’. Hynes, at the order of his superiors, 
had gone to the missions of British Guiana.” 

Thus there were only eight priests (six Dominicans 
and two diocesan clergymen) left on the missions of 
Ohio, though three times that number would have been 
insufficient for the needs of the diocese. Bishop Fen- 
wick was therefore practically obliged to call Fathers 
William Tuite, Samuel Montgomery, and Richard 
Miles from Saint Rose’s to aid him in the north.” 
Stephen Montgomery had been transferred to the 
cathedral at Cincinnati from Zanesville, where he had 
lately erected a neat brick church, and placed it under 
the patronage of Saint John the Evangelist.* Accord- 

11 Life of Fenwick, passim. 

12.The two secular priests then in Ohio were Frederic Rese and James 
I. Mullon; the six members of the Order of Preachers Stephen H. Mont- 
gomery, Nicholas D. Young, John B. De Raymaecker, John H. McGra- 
dy, Thomas H. Martin, and Daniel O’Leary. The addition of Fathers 
Miles, Tuite, and Samuel L. Montgomery raised the number of Domini- 


cans to nine, and the total of the clergy to eleven. 
13 United States Catholic Miscellany, February 24, 1827; Sutor, Past 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 219 


ingly, Father Miles was installed as pastor of that 
parish, with its outlying missions. 

The letter removing him from Saint Rose’s is dated 
October 22, 1828, states that his transfer is temporary 
(ad tempus), directs him to report at the episcopal 
residence in Cincinnati for further orders, and instructs 
him to begin his journey on the third day of November. 
The Annales de la Propagation de la Foi seem to say 
that he went first to Canton, and the tradition of Saint 
Joseph’s Province accredits him with a brief pastorship 
there shortly after the death of Father Hill. However, 
this can not be proved by the church records of Canton, 
for they do not go back earlier than 1830, more than a 
year after the Father of the Church in Tennessee had 
taken charge at Zanesville.“ 

Father Miles began a new church book at Zanesville, 
in which his first entry bears the date of December 25, 
1828. It is the baptism of Thomas D. and Peter S., 
sons of Francis and Catherine (Sarchet) Dusouchet— 
god-parents Thomas William McCaddon and Barbara 
Dugan. Unless there were an earlier book of records, 
and Present of the City of Zanesville and Muskingum County, Ohio, 
p. 159; Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, September, 
1914 (“The First Three Catholic Churches in Zanesville, Ohio,’ by R. J. J. 
Harkins) ; Diocese of Columbus, p. 263; Life of Fenwick, pp. 310 and 323. 
The cornerstone of this church was laid on March 4, 1825; and it was 
dedicated, though by no means completed interiorly, on July 2, 1825. 
The Diocese of Columbus erroneously calls it Saint John the Baptist’s, 
instead of Saint John the Evangelist’s; while Mr. Harkins seems evi- 
dently in error when he places its dedication in 1827. 

14 Archives of Saint Rose’s Priory, in Kentucky; records of Saint 
John the Baptist’s, Canton, Ohio; Annales, IV, 504; Granam, A Sketch 
of Saint John’s Parish (Canton, Ohio), p. 91. Two letters of Bishop Flaget 
to the prefect of the Propaganda (May 12 and December 12, 1829— 
Propaganda Archives, Vol. 10) show that Bardstown’s prelate complained 


of Fenwick’s calling Miles, Tuite, and S. L. Montgomery to Ohio without 
consulting him. 


220 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


now lost, which he used for a time, the above sacrament 
was no doubt administered within a week or two after 
our missionary: took charge of what was then, though 
perhaps not so large as a few others, one of the most 
promising parishes in Ohio outside of Cincinnati.” 

Be this as it may, the record approximates the be- 
ginning of a notable period in Father Miles’ life. 
Doubtless it was no little hardship for him to tear him- 
self away from his beloved Saint Rose’s, the good 
people whom he had helped to guide in the spiritual 
life for so many years, and the religious community 
in whose establishment he had assisted. But he was 
too true and too well-trained a religious to hesitate when 
the voice of authority had spoken. Nor was his ready 
obedience to the call for the north slow in its reward. 
Shortly after the apostolic man’s arrival in Ohio, the 
Rev. John Baptist Clicteur, a newly ordained priest 
then acting as secretary to Bishop Fenwick, wrote to 
the Annales:*® 

After the death of Father Hill, the bishop, who is the su- 
perior general of the Dominicans here in America, wishing to fill 
his place, withdrew Father Miles from the Dominican convent in 
Kentucky. Father Miles felt keenly being torn away from the 
good Kentuckians of Saint Rose’s Congregation, to whom he 
ministered, and begged the bishop to allow him to return thither, 
when he should have labored a few months in Ohio. The mon- 
signor has placed him at Zanesville, Muskingum County (Ohio). 
Lately he visited the Catholics in the districts nearest to that city. 
On his return he wrote to the bishop, expressing himself as follows: 

“I have just made my first circuit. I visited several congre- 
gations and preached in many places. I baptized a large number 


15 Records of Saint Thomas’ Church, Zanesville, Ohio. 

16 Father Clicteur was ordained in Cincinnati (by Bishop Fenwick) on 
February 2 1829. At the same time were ordained the Revs. John M. 
Henni (later archbishop of Milwaukee) and Martin Kundig. Clicteur 
died on September 18, 1829. 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO peaked 


of children and two adults who had never professed any religion, 
received several Protestants into the Church, and left many 
others well disposed towards conversion. These last I will admit 
into the fold on my next tour, when they will be sufficiently in- 
structed.’ In a word, I have been in Ohio only a few weeks, 
and already, in spite of the prejudices that I had conceived, I 
am beginning to feel that I should like to remain here permanently ; 
for I see clearly that the people of Ohio are so well disposed that, 
if you had sufficient priests, you could make the whole state 
SeALOOLIC. act 

Some miles distant from Zanesville there is a congregation 
composed entirely of converts. It has nearly five hundred mem- 
bers. They have lately built a church, which, though small, is 
quite pretty. Father Miles has visited these people, and made 
further conversions among them. He says that he remarked a 
great fervor among them in the service of the Divine Master. 
May it please heaven to send us a few more priests, and to grant 
that we may be able to station one in such congregations !15 


The good promises given thus early by our mission- 
ary were fully realized. Ohio has had many zealous, 
efficient, and tireless missionaries who have aided at 


17 The missionaries of those days, owing to their enforced long absences 
from the various Catholic settlements, were obliged to confide the in- 
struction of their catechumens to the care of the more faithful and intelli- 
gent members of the parishes appointed to that duty. 

18 4nnales, IV, 509-510. This parish which Father Clicteur tells us 
was so largely composed of converts seems certainly to have been that 
of Saint Dominic, Beaver Township, Guernsey County, which is spoken 
of more than once in the literature of that day as a parish of converts. 
In 1851, Beaver Township was taken from Guernsey County to aid in 
forming that of Noble, and is now in the extreme northeastern part of 
the latter county. It would appear that this church was near the present 
Batesville; for Howe (Historical Collections of Ohio, II, 634) gives that 
village a Catholic church and states: “Catholics are strong in this region. 
As early as 1825 they erected a log church, which in 1853 was succeeded 
by a brick edifice at a cost of $8,000.” It is now the parish of Temperance- 
ville, just over the border in Belmont County. The History of the Upper 
Ohio Valley (by Bryant and Fuller), II, 783, is certainly in error when 
it states that the log church was erected in 1822. This work says that 
the brick edifice (Saint Mary’s) was erected in 1854. 


222 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


one time or another in the building up of her Church. 
Father Miles ranks high among the best of them. 
From Zanesville as the center of his apostolic activities 
he traversed and re-traversed) Muskingum, Morgan, 
Noble, Guernsey, and Coshocton counties. At times 
his labors carried him into Licking and Knox counties, 
or to more remote places. Occasionally Bishop Fen- 
wick took him on his own toilsome journeys;” for he 
was no less an agreeable companion than a willing work- 
er, always ready to do whatever he was asked, endowed 
with the happy faculty of doing it to the best advan- 
tage, and quick to detect what needed to be done. 

His manners were as gentle and amiable as those of 
Fenwick himself; his ways of dealing with his fellow- 
men as open and candid; his zeal as consuming; his 
charity as broad; his bearing, though stately, as guile- 
less; his deportment as gentlemanly and priestly. These 
noble qualities were enhanced by a splendid physique— 
a countenance in which were reflected a great tenderness 
of heart and sympathetic honesty, no less than a strong 
character—an untiring energy—and an_ unaffected 
piety. His soul went out to all who were in distress, 
which caused him to seek in every way to aid those 
who were in need, whether of the goods of this earth or 
of spiritual consolation. He was notably felicitous in 
his way of meeting those who were not Catholics. 

As he had done in Kentucky, so in Ohio Father Miles 
soon acquired the reputation of being a good preacher. 
Where there was no Catholic church, as often happened, 
he preached in that of the Presbyterians, the Metho- 
dists, or other religious affiliation—in courthouses, or 


19 The United States Catholic Miscellany of January 2, and December 4, 
1830, gives two such journeys. 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 223 


schools, and not infrequently in the open air from a 
platform in some grove or the public square of a town. 
Crowds came to hear him, and his strong voice and 
distinct articulation caused him to be understood by 
all, even when he spoke outdoors. 

Ordinarily, when addressing a non-Catholic or mixed 
audience, he chose for his topic the spirit of the Church, 
some point of her doctrine which he wished to prove 
or elucidate, or which had been misunderstood, or stock 
accusations against Catholicity. Owing to the fact 
that he was for the greater part alone in Ohio, only on 
rare occasions could he there obtain a priest for public 
discussions of religious matters through questions and 
answer, like those which he had used with good effect in 
Kentucky. In both sermon and conversation he was 
uniformly careful to avoid whatever might wound the 
feelings of those to whom he spoke, even when he sought 
to drive home a point with telling force. He was an 
adept in the combination of strong argument with 
happy expression, which never failed to win his hearers 
and to send them away well pleased. 

Another trait that characterized the sermons and 
lectures of the missionary was the simplicity of his 
style and the use of words that every one could under- 
stand. With him it was a case of “he who runs may 
read.” Indeed, it is said that his style mirrored the 
inner man, gave his discourses an added charm, and 
rendered them all the more fruitful in good. He rather 
studiously abstained from attempts at flights of ora- 
tory, which he believed tended more to please the ear 
than to touch the mind and heart, or to bring conviction. 
For the sermon or lecture eloquent in this sense he felt 
that he had little talent. Perhaps in this modesty, the 


224 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


fact that he labored principally in the backwoods of 
Ohio and Kentucky, his aversion to seeing his name in 
the public press, and his dislike for notoriety we have 
the explanation of why he did not become more widely 
known as a preacher, and was not in greater demand as 
the speaker on occasions of note. 

The above qualities, no doubt, combined to win 
Father Miles the confidence of those with whom he 
came into contact in the private walks of life. As 
a matter of fact, tradition tells us that he effected as 
much good by his ordinary conversations as from the 
rostrum; for he was ever on the alert to spread the light 
of truth. Although retiring by nature, his zeal almost 
invariably led him deftly to broach the subject of relig- 
ion to those whom he met by any chance. Often the 
seed thus sown afterwards blossomed into the flower of 
Catholic faith.”° 

Bishop Fenwick and Father Hill are commonly 
given the credit of being the most successful convert 
makers among the early missionaries of Ohio. Yet the 
tradition of Saint Joseph’s Province is that Father 
Miles, although not so long in the state as they (nor 
his riding circuit so extensive as that of the bishop), 
was perhaps just as effective a worker among non- 
Catholics. What we know of his character, zeal, and 
talent for dealing with men justifies such a_ belief. 
So should it be noticed that few, if any, of the mission- 
aries in Ohio at that time had a larger territory under 
their charge. Muskingum, Coschocton, Guernsey, and 
Noble counties, with parts of Licking and Morgan 

20 These traditions are still happy memories in Saint Joseph’s Province 


and in the Diocese of Columbus (established in 1868). Thirty years ago 
they were strong and vigorous. 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 225 


counties, seem to have constituted his parish proper.” 
They kept him almost continually on horseback. In 
these districts he brought many dissidents into the 
Church, as well as reclaimed numbers of fallen-away or 
negligent Catholics, and converted not a few sinners. 

Muskingum County, because more thickly populated 
and containing the greater number of faithful, demand- 
ed the principal part of the devoted pastor’s time and at- 
tention. Indeed, that county alone was more than 
the most zealous and stalwart messenger of Christ 
could attend to, if the best results were to be attained. 
No priest in the Diocese of Cincinnati, we venture to 
say, could have toiled more diligently or accomplished 
greater good for the Catholics there than did the sub- 
ject of our narrative. 

How faithfully he labored, no less than how strong 
a hold he gained on the hearts of the people, is evidenced 
by the fact that his memory is still held in benediction 
not merely in Zanesville, but even throughout Muskin- 
gum County, albeit it is nearly a hundred years since 
he exercised the ministry in those parts. One still 
runs across Catholics who bear the first name of Miles 
in his honor. ‘The records of the old Dominican parish 
in Zanesville, now known as Saint Thomas’, show a 
long list of notable pastors and curates. Passing over 
for the present the Father of the Church in Tennessee, 
one of them, Father Joseph Sadoc Alemany, became 

21 The old Catholic Almanac (now called Catholic Directory) and the 
records of Saint Mary’s Church, Temperanceville, Ohio, show that all 
these places were attended from Zanesville until near the end of 1834, 
with an exception of a tenure of the Rev. Martin Kundig in Guernsey 
County from late November, 1832, until the middle of March, 1833. The 
Rev. James Reid, ordained by Bishop Fenwick on Holy Saturday, April 


11, 1832, became pastor of Saint Dominic’s, Guernsey County, late in 1834, 
and records his first baptism: on October 31. 


16 


226 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the first archbishop of San Francisco. Another, 
Father Charles Pius Montgomery, was appointed 
bishop of Monterey, California, but declined the miter. 
A. third, the late lamented Very Rev. Lawrence 
Francis Kearney, 8.T.M., headed the list sent in by 
the diocesan electors as their unanimous first choice for 
a successor to scholarly Bishop Waterson in the Diocese 
of Columbus, Ohio. None of them, however, have been 
more highly esteemed or more dearly beloved than was 
Father Miles. Non-Catholics held him in almost as 
great regard as did-those of his own flock. 

A musician himself, and ever striving to make the ser- 
vice of God more and more attractive, he gave much 
attention to the Church music at Saint John’s. As a 
consequence, its choir soon became widely known for 
its efficiency. A lover of Catholic literature, and desir- 
ous of providing his people with good, wholesome 
reading, he acted as agent for the Catholic papers of 
the country in all the missions under his charge. In 
short, zealous and charitable to the fingers’ tips, noth- 
ing that made for the spiritual advantage of his flock 
escaped his notice. 

In addition to the spiritual blessings it received from 
him, Father Miles, considering the times and the length 
of his pastorate there, did much for the Catholicity of 
Zanesville in a temporal way. One of the first matters 
that demanded his attention was the erection of a rec- 
tory. How well he built it may be seen from the fact 
that, though enlarged later, it served as a residence for 
the fathers until five or six years ago. He completed 
and decorated the interior of Saint John’s, placed a 
graceful little tower upon it, and hung therein the bell 
which hitherto had swung from a wooden frame in the 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 227 


yard. When finished the sacred edifice was considered 
one of the finest in the city. 

Another benefit which should not be overlooked was 
a Catholic school. An educator himself, Father Miles 
wished the children under his charge to have the ad- 
vantages of the best education that could be procured; 
but he wanted it to be obtained under Catholic influ- 
ences, for he felt that only in this way could their 
religion and morality be safeguarded, and the highest 
interests of their souls protected. Accordingly, about 
1830, he arranged the basement of his church, where 
he opened one of the earliest parochial schools in Ohio. 
Doubtless he would have been delighted to obtain a 
- community of sisters for this purpose; but under the 
impossiblity of procuring such instructors he had to 
content himself with lay teachers, over whom he kept 
a watchful eye.” 

Despite the expense of these improvements, for he 
was a practical man, our missionary managed greatly 
to reduce the debt of the parish. Under his guidance 
both spirituals and temporals prospered. It was in 
no small measure due to his administration that the 
History of the Diocese of Columbus could truly state 
that “Zanesville has always been a stronghold of Cath- 
olic faith.” ** 

Still another blessing to religion in Ohio in which our 
ambassador of Christ was deeply interested, even if he 
were not a prime mover in the enterprise, is recorded 
in the United States Catholic Miscellany of February 

22 Diocese of Columbus, pp. 261 ff. Even if he had secured sisters for 
his school, he could have used them only for the girls and small boys, 


for at that time our nuns did not teach large boys. 
23 [bid., p. 261. 


228 THE FATHER OF THE CHORCH IN TENNESSEE 


20, 1830. Here that journal’s correspondent tells its 
editor: 

Four Sisters of the Order of St. Dominic, called from their 
monastery in Kentucky, a few days since, passed through Cincin- 
nati, on their ,way to Somerset, Perry County, Ohio. They are 
about to establish a female school in that place near the church 
of the Holy Trinity. From their qualifications, and devotedness 
to the cause of moral and religious instruction, much good may be 
anticipated from their location in the large and respectable con- 
gregation of St. Joseph’s. The same attention will be paid, by 
them, to the poor children, as is paid by the Sisters of Charity 
[in Cincinnati]. 

Tradition tells us that, almost from the time he was 
stationed at Zanesville, Father Miles sought to have 
an establishment of these Dominican Sisters founded 
in Ohio. One is inclined to think that, could he have 
had his own way, Zanesville would have been chosen 
as the place of their location. Possibly he was thwarted 
in such a design only by the fact that his frequent 
absences on, the missions attended from Saint John the 
Evangelist’s made it impossible for him always to give 
them mass on Sundays. Be this as it may, there is no 
room for doubt but that he was delighted with the 
action of Bishop Fenwick in bringing them into his 
diocese, and that they frequently sought the mission- 
ary’s advice and direction as long as he remained in 
the north. 

Bishop Fenwick had accepted the superiorship over 
his former brethren in religion with reluctance. Nat- 
urally, therefore, he was anxious to be relieved of so 
uncommon and extra-constitutional a position. Be- 
sides, especially since his diocesan clergy were on the 
increase, he must have felt that such a step was de- 
manded by simple justice to the little band of Friars 


MISSIONARY IN OHIO 229 


Preacher. Accordingly, he called a meeting at Cincin- 
nati on April 18, 1831, to which he summoned Fathers 
Richard P. Miles, Samuel L. Montgomery, Nicholas 
D. Young, Stephen H. Montgomery, Joseph T. Jar- 
boe, and Charles P. Montgomery. Here, among 
other things, it was decided that the bishop should ask 
the Holy See and the General of the Order to accept 
his resignation as superior of the Dominicans; and that 
he should propose Fathers Miles and Young respec- 
tively as the assembly’s first and second choice for the 
provincialship. This petition was sent to Rome, and the 
tradition of the province is that it was the unanimous 
wish of its members that the subject of our narrative 
would be selected as its head.” 

Ever cautious Rome is proverbially slow to act. 
Perhaps in this instance the delay was lengthened by 
the high regard in which Cincinnati’s prelate was held 
alike by the papal court and the Dominican General, 
together with a knowledge of the needs of the youthful 
diocese. Meanwhile the saintly Fenwick fell a victim 

24 Archives of Saint Joseph’s Priory, Somerset, Ohio. The petition 
and letter which Bishop Fenwick sent to Rome on this matter could not 
be found in the Propaganda Archives or those of the Dominican General. 
Besides Fathers Clicteur, Henni and Kundig, already mentioned, Bishop 
Fenwick had ordained the Rev. Edmund Quinn in Cincinnati, January 
1, 1830; Fathers J. T. Jarboe, C. P. Montgomery, Charles D. Bowling, 
and James V. Bullock at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, June 13, 1830; and 
Father Samuel C. Mazzuchelli (later one of the most celebrated mission- 
aries of the northwest) in Cincinnati on September 5, 1830. Quinn was 
a priest of the diocese. The other five were Dominicans; but Mazzuchelli 
had come to America with the hope of laboring among the Indians. 
Bowling had been sent to Somerset, and another of the band seems to 
have been destined for the same place. The Rev. Anthony Ganilh had re- 
turned to the diocese, while several seminarians at Cincinnati and else- 
where were nearing ordination. Thus, albeit he still needed many priests, 


the bishop was no longer in such dire straits, and saw his way to put 
his former brethren back on their proper footing. 


230 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of his zeal at Wooster, Ohio. This occurred on Sep- 
tember 26, 1832. There were those who believed that, 
in view of what the Order had done for religion in the 
state, the Holy See would probably select his successor 
from among the Friars Preacher, and hoped that, should 
such a choice be made, it would fall on Richard Pius 


Miles. 


CHAPTER XI 
PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 


Lro XII, acting on the agreement between Cardinal 
Mauro Cappellari and the Most Rev. Joseph Velzi, re- 
spectively the prefect of the Propaganda and the Supe- 
rior General of the Dominicans, had authorized the 
appointment of Bishop Fenwick as the head of Saint 
Joseph’s Province. In November, 1830, Pius VIII, 
Leo’s successor, died after a short reign. Italy was 
then in the throes of an agitation excited by the secret 
societies, notably by the Carbonari, and was beginning 
to be stirred by the influence of French liberalism. The 
spirit of revolution was ripe everywhere. On February 
2, 1831, after a conclave that lasted fifty days, Cardinal 
Capellari ascended the throne of Peter, taking the name 
Gregory XVI. On the very day of Gregory’s election, 
the Most Rev. Thomas Ancarani, successor to Father 
Velzi (who had resigned the office of General in July, | 
1828, in order to become master of the Sacred Palace), 
passed to his eternal reward, and was at once succeeded 
by Father Francis Ferdinand Jabalot.’ 

It is doubtful if the assembly gathered at Cincinnati 
to discuss the affairs of Saint Joseph’s Province were 
aware of Father Ancarani’s demise. Possibly, there- 

1 Arzoc, Manual of Universal Church History, III, 691 ff; Morttrr, 
Histoire des Maitres Généraux de l’Ordre des Fréres Précheurs, VII, 472; 
TAURISANO, Series Magistrorum Generalium Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, 


mn 14, 
Zot 


232 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


fore, Fenwick’s resignation of the provincialship was 
sent to him, although it was received by Father J abalot. 
At first, the authorities at Rome declined to accede to 
the request; nay, for more than a year they apparently 
did not even acknowledge the receipt of the earnest and 
repeated solicitations of the apostle of Ohio that he 
might be relieved of so undesirable a burden. 

Meanwhile, doubts, based on the constitutions of their 
institute, had arisen in the minds of the fathers in Ken- 
tucky. They believed that the bishop’s superiorship 
had ceased with the resignation of Father Velzi who had 
appointed him to the office, and felt, quite naturally, 
that they should now have a provincial taken from the 
actual members of the Order. Father Miles was sent 
to Saint Rose’s in the capacity of visitor that he might 
convince them that the Velzi arrangement, because 
sanctioned by the Holy Father, would have to stand 
until it was dissolved; and that the bishop was doing all 
in his power to be freed from the unnatural position.’ 

Finally, November 30, 1832, Father Jabalot wrote 
to Cincinnati’s prelate to notify him that, in compliance 
with his “wishes and repeated requests,” he had ac- 
cepted his resignation, and would appoint his nephew 
“vicar provincial ad beneplacitum Nostrum.” Four 
days later, December 3, 1832, the General forwarded 
letters patent to Father N. D. Young by which he was 
instituted head of the province.® 

2 Bishop Fenwick, Washington, D. C., January 23, 1832, and Cincinnati, 
April 3, 1832, to Father Thomas Martin, Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky (Ar- 
chives of Saint Rose’s Priory). 

3 Jabalot’s letter to Fenwick is in Archives of Saint Joseph’s, Somerset, 
Ohio. We could not find the letters patent to Young; but their date is 


given in a record of the Profession Book at Saint Rose’s, and also in 
a note of Father Stephen Byrne on them in Saint Joseph’s Archives. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP ide 


Doctor Fenwick had died on the twenty-sixth day of 
the preceding September; but Jabalot’s letter to him, 
as well as the introductory words of the letters patent 
of Young’s appointment, shows that the General was 
not cognizant of this sad fact.* It is evident that a 
desire to gratify the province’s saintly founder was a 
deciding factor in the nomination of his kinsman to the 
honorable office of provincial, instead of Father Miles, 
although the latter had been the Cincinnati assembly’s 
first choice for the place. Doubtless, too, it was felt 
at Rome that the conferring of this position upon the 
bishop’s nephew would insure the most harmonious re- 
lations between the respective heads of the Diocese of 
Cincinnati and the Province of Saint Joseph. 

Despite diligent search, we failed to discover just 
when Father Young received the letters of his appoint- 
ment; but they do not appear to have reached America 
until the spring of 1833. Perhaps the least disap- 
pointed man in the province at the General’s selection 
for its head was Father Miles himself, even though, in 
view of the choice of his brethren, he might with reason 
have felt that the honor was due to him; for Father 
Young was a close friend and a zealous priest, while 
the subject of our narrative desired nothing more than 
to be left to the even tenor of his ways in laboring 
for the salvation of souls without the weight of 
authority. 

Zealously did the ambassador of Christ continue his 

4 Note of Father Stephen Byrne as in the preceding note. Jabalot’s 
words, as quoted by Byrne, are: “Cum, vacante officio Provincialatus 
praefatae Provinciae Sancti Josephi in Ditionibus Foederatis in America 
Septentrionali propter abdicationem Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi Dom- 


ini Cincinnatensis Ordinis Nostri cujus justissimae petitioni annuendum 
duximus’, etc. 


234 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


work in Zanesville and on the missions. But his toil 
there was near its close. After the death of Bishop 
Fenwick, Father Thomas Martin, who had been supe- 
rior at Saint Rose’s, returned to Ohio. When, there- 
fore, the community met to elect a successor to him, 
their choice fell upon Father Miles. This was on May 
1, 1833.° It is worthy of notice that this was the first 
election of a superior at Saint Rose’s, for until then its 
priors had been instituted by the higher authorities; and 
it is said that there was but one ballot, and that, when 
the votes were counted, they were all found to be for 
Father Miles. 

Evidently he and Father Young were in Kentucky 
at the time, and the provincial hastened to confirm the 
election—possibly ordered Miles to accept the office; 
for the new prior presided at an investiture in the 
habit on May 5, 1833.° It would have been impossible 
at that day for him to receive word in Ohio and reach 
Saint Rose’s between that date and the time of his 
election. Certain also is it that he then returned to 
Zanesville in order to arrange his affairs there. 

During his absence Kentucky was visited by one of 
those periodical epidemics of Asiatic cholera which were 
the dread of the past. It threw all the state into con- 
sternation. In the central parts, where lay the prin- 
cipal Catholic settlements, the plague appeared in an 
especially violent and deadly form. ‘There mourning 
and desolation were to be seen on all sides. Perhaps 
none of the parishes were so severely smitten as that of 
Saint Rose. The cholera broke out in the latter half 
of May. Father Miles perforce remained in Zanesville 


5 Saint Rose’s Profession Book, p. 124. 
6 [bid., p. 4. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 235 


until his successor could be appointed; but on the very 
day of the arrival of Father Charles P. Montgomery 
he started for the sorely afflicted congregation that had 
just been placed under his charge.‘ 

When the new pastor reached Saint Rose’s, he found 
the people stricken with a terror and bowed with a 
sorrow such as he had never seen before. His own 
heart was pierced as with a sword by the suffering and 
lamentations of the parish. His life-long friend, good, 
kindly Father William R. Tuite, had succumbed. to 
his zeal, having contracted the cholera while adminis- 
tering to the sick in the first days of the plague, and 
died in a few hours. This was on May 25, 1833.° 
Without thought of danger to himself, Father Miles, 
though he had travelled all the way (some three hun- 
dred and fifty miles) from Zanesville, Ohio, on horse- 
back, at once threw himself into the thick and thin of 
the confusion, administering the sacraments, visiting the 
stricken or convalescent, aiding the poor, consoling the 
afflicted, or performing whatever other deeds of charity 
lay in his power. 

In these works of mercy our Friar Preacher knew no 
distinction of race, condition, or creed. ‘The colored 
slave demanded his attention as readily as the free-born 
white, the poorest as readily as the richest, those of 

7 Baptismal records of Saint Thomas’, Zanesville, Ohio. Father Miles’ 
last record is on June 2, 1833, and Father Montgomery makes his first 
on the same day. 

8 Saint Rose’s Profession Book, p. 181. It is not stated there that 
Father Tuite died of the cholera; but it is a tradition, too strong 
to be doubted, of both Saint Joseph’s Province and Saint Rose’s Parish 
that he contracted the disease a few days after its appearance, while 
administering to the sick, and died in a few hours. For many years 


the people frequently prayed at his grave, and took earth from it to their 
homes. They venerated him as a saint. 


236 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


another religious affiliation as readily as those of his 
own. Everywhere non-Catholics, stricken with fear 
and deprived of the consolations of religion, flocked 
to the priests. Many received baptism on their death- 
beds, or came into the Church later as a result of the 
heroic zeal shown by the missionaries at the time of the 
epidemic. In the parish of Saint Rose and on its mis- 
sions Father Miles, because of his happy way of meet- 
ing those outside the fold, ordinarily attended to such 
calls; and it is said that his ministrations bore rich fruit. 

It was only natural that, on his return from Ohio, the 
new prior should find all works suspended at Saint 
Rose’s except those of charity and clerical ministra- 
tions. Fathers Polin, Samuel Montgomery, and C. 
D. Bowling were overwhelmed with calls from near 
and far; while Father Jarboe, the subprior, had per- 
haps already installed himself and two lay brothers in 
Springfield, where nearly the entire population was 
stricken with cholera at one time. For fear of the dread 
disease the neighbors could not be induced to wait on 
the sick and dying, or even to bury the dead. Father 
Miles multiplied himself, so to speak, that he might 
lighten the toils of his confréres, no less than aid the 
suffering and distressed. 

In a long letter on the epidemic to the editor of the 
‘Annales de la Propagation de la Foi Bishop Flaget 
highly praises the zeal of his clergy and the sisters on 
this sad occasion. But he singles out the fathers of 
Saint Rose’s for special laudation, and lays particular 
stress on the Springfield incident. 

For more than two months [he says] the Dominican Fathers 


who have charge of the most numerous Catholic congregation in 
Kentucky gave themselves up to almost inconceivable labors. In 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 237 


a little town near their convent nearly all the inhabitants, five or 
six hundred in number, were stricken at the same time with the 
frightful disease. Consternation became so universal that the sick 
were left almost entirely to themselves; for the neighbors were 
afraid to go near a house infected with an epidemic that had 
become so fatal. 

A young Dominican Father, born and reared in Kentucky, though 
of very delicate health, and already much exhausted by the fatigue 
and toils of the ministry, betook himself with two lay brothers 
of his Order to this town thus generally afflicted. Animated with 
a truly priestly zeal, he threw himself into his work amidst the sick 
and dying with a courage which was believed to be nothing short 
of the marvellous, and visited all who were in suffering, whether 
they were Catholics or non-Catholics. He was welcomed every- 
where, for wherever he went he dispersed in abundance those 
spiritual consolations which mere worldlings can not bestow. Nor 
did he neglect the needs of the body, and his timely services 
often saved the sick from death. A number of non-Catholics, who 
had vainly sought their minister, gave a ready ear to the instruc- 
tions of the Dominican, accepted the truths which he made known 
to them, and ended by embracing our holy religion.’ 

The two lay brothers also seemed to multiply themselves in 
giving medical succor to the sick, but above all in burying the 
dead. At least eighty persons succumbed to the cholera’s ravages, 
and were carried off in less than fifteen days.!° 

Notwithstanding the considerable losses and expenses which 
they suffered then, the inhabitants of the village who survived the 
destructive scourge have insistently asked my permission to buy 
a lot in the town, to build a church on it, and to bestow these 


9 Bishop Flaget does not mention Father Jarboe by name, but the de- 
scription leaves no doubt about his identity. He had been in very poor 
health from his student days. At the time of his ordination, three years 
before, he was so weak that it was necessary for a priest to support him 
during the ceremony. He had a good knowledge of medicine which he 
used in aid of the poor throughout his long and useful life. In and 
around Springfield one still hears the people speak of his labors there at 
the time of the cholera. See also Voiz, A Century's Record, pp. 16-17 

10 These men were Brother Patrick McKenna and either Brother Pat- 
rick Shepherd, or Brother William Peter Hutton. 


238 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 

upon the Dominican Fathers as a fitting acknowledgment of their 
keen appreciation of the important services which they received 
from these fathers during the cholera. The Protestants offer to 
contribute generously towards this twofold act of piety and 
gratitude.4_ Thus God is pleased to reward his zealous servants 
a hundredfold even in this world. Although the five Dominican 
Fathers who showed such great zeal throughout the time that the 
epidemic lasted were extremely fatigued, nay, exhausted, none 
of them died. Now, thanks be to God, they are all in good 
health.” 

Father Miles had every reason to take an honest 
pride in the fidelity manifested by his brethren at this 
lamentable time. The fathers’ courage had been tried 
as it had never been tried before, and to a man they 
were found true even in the face of death. Similarly 
he must have been greatly gratified at the heroism shown 
by the little community of Dominican Sisters in whose 
establishment he played so important a part, for they 
yielded to none in courageous deeds during the cholera. 
Possibly he directed them in their efforts of charity. 


Of these Bishop Flaget writes: 

The Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Dominic have as much 
claim to the recognition of the public as the Sisters of Charity 
and the Sisters of Loretto. There being only ten or eleven sisters 
in the community in Kentucky, they had recourse to a holy in- 
genuity in order to multiply their forces that they might thus 


11 For some reason the church in Springfield was not erected until 
1843. It was dedicated in January, 1844. 

12 Annales, VII, 95-96. These five priests were Fathers Miles, Jarboe, 
S. L. Montgomery, Polin, and Bowling. Father C. P. Montgomery left 
Saint Rose’s for Ohio just before the cholera appeared. Evidently Bishop 
Flaget overlooked Father Tuite who died at its outbreak. So did he 
speak in a relative sense, when he said that all the fathers were in good 
health, for Polin and Jarboe were both quite sickly. It is strange that 
Spalding (Life of Bishop Flaget, pp. 275 ff), although he refers to this 
letter in the Annales, speaks of the labors of others at some length, and 
mentions a few by name, says not a word about the work of the Domini- 
cans during this epidemic of cholera. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 239 


render greater services to the sick in the county in which their 
convent is situated. They induced women of mature age and 
known virtue to associate themselves with their works of charity. 
For many weeks might they be seen at all hours of day or night 
in those houses where the sick were most numerous, or misery at 
its height. Not one of them or of their companions died; but all 
of them were worn out and exhausted beyond the power of words 
to describe. Without the special protection of divine providence, 
it would have been impossible for them so long to continue such 
toils of mercy and compassion.! 

Happy traditions concerning these heroic labors of 
the Friars Preacher are still extant in Washington 
County, Kentucky. Before his transfer to Ohio, 
Father Miles had been one of the most popular and 
highly esteemed priests at Saint Rose’s. The zeal, 
courage, and charity that he exhibited throughout the 
ordeal of the cholera made him still more beloved by 
the people irrespective of race or creed. This love 
still exists, and it explains the frequency with which 
one runs across persons, both black and white, in that 
part of Kentucky with the first name of Miles, Richard, 
or Pius. 

Another tradition in Saint Joseph’s Province tells 
us that the good judgment, zeal, and other excellent 
qualities manifested by the subject of our narrative 
at this trying time so won the heart of Bishop Flaget 
that the saintly prelate often consulted him on matters 
of the highest importance. One such affair, it is said, 
was the choice of a coadjutor to succeed aged Bishop 
David who had resigned. Bishop Flaget, so the story 
goes, was undecided whether to urge the appointment 
of the Rev. Guy Ignatius Chabrat, whose name had 

13 Annales, VII, 94.. Spalding, as in the preceding note, tells of the 


zeal of the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Loretto at this time, 
but passes over that of the Dominican Sisters. 


240 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


already been sent to Rome, or to propose that of the 
Rev. Ignatius A. Reynolds in his stead; and Father 
Miles advocated the appointment of Chabrat, for he 
had rendered longer, if not greater, services to the dio- 
cese, and, while not a favorite with the clergy, was less 
unpopular than Reynolds. 

Howsoever this be, the tradition is corroborated by 
Webb’s statement that Doctor Reynolds did not enjoy 
much popularity in Kentucky,“ and by a paragraph 
in Spalding’s biography of Bishop Flaget. After 
giving an account of an attack of cholera which brought 
that prelate to the verge of the grave, Doctor Spalding 


proceeds to say: 

On his recovery, he continued to feel no little solicitude in 
regard to his future Coadjutor. The negotiations on the subject 
were long pending; Rome moved slowly and cautiously in a matter 
of so much importance. At length, on the feast of the Apostles 
SS. Peter and Paul,—June 29th, 1834,—the Bulls arrived, ap- 
pointing Dr. Chabrat Bishop of Bolina, and Coadjutor of Bishop 
Flaget. The consecration took place on the 20th of July, in the 
Cathedral of Bardstown; our venerable prelate being the Con- 
secrator, and Bishop David and the Rev. R. P. Miles, O.P., being 


the assistants.1° 


Certainly the selection of Father Miles for the sin- 


14 Centenary of Catholicity, p. 312. 

15 Life of Flaget, p. 280. Doctor Spalding, earlier in his volume, tells 
how Chabrat’s name had been sent to Rome sometime before this date, 
and insinuates that there was opposition to his appointment; but he 
does not mention Reynold’s name. However, we have seen a letter in the 
Propaganda Archives signed by a number of priests begging that Father 
Reynolds would not be appointed. Possibly Doctor Spalding does not 
tell all he knew. See also CLarkeE, Lives of the Deceased Bishops, Ill, 
286. We have before us photostat copies of four letters of Bishop F. P. 
Kenrick to Bishop Flaget on the question of proposing Fathers Chabrat 
and Reynolds as his coadjutor. The originals are in the Louisville Ar- 
chives, and were written at Pittsburgh, November 5, 1832, and at Phila- 
delphia, August 6, 1832, September 17, 1833, and January 4, 1834. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 241 


gular distinction of assistant to the consecrating prelate, 
together with the necessity of obtaining faculties from 
Rome for him so to act, when there were bishops 
as near as Saint Louis and Cincinnati, and priests of high 
standing who belonged to the diocese, not only shows 
the favor in which our Friar Preacher was held, but also 
lends credence to the tradition Just mentioned. As a 
matter of fact, Saint Rose’s prior had become one of the 
best known and most esteemed clergymen in Ohio and 
Kentucky. 

Quite naturally, the sorrow and desolation which the 
cholera left in its wake threw a pall of gloom over the 
parish of Saint Rose for some months afterwards. 
From house to house the kind-hearted pastor made his 
way on foot or on his faithful horse, consoling the afflict- 
ed, cheering the disconsolate, encouraging the timid, suc- 
coring those left in want. Everywhere were his visits 
received as those of an angel of mercy who spread bless- 
ings as he passed along. The poor colored people 
were an object of his special solicitude. One can but 
hope that the traditions of the good thus accomplished 
by our gentle ambassador of Christ will continue to 
be handed down from generation to generation, for 
seldom perhaps has charity ever been dispensed with 
greater tenderness, or more beneficially to religion. 

No doubt the readiness with which the people of 
the parish responded to his efforts helped to sustain 
his energy, as well as enabled him to proceed with his 
pastoral work with a lighter heart. But even to outline 
his parochial labors, apart from his toils in connection 
with the cholera, during the three years of priorship at 
Saint Rose’s were merely to repeat what has been told 
in previous chapters of his exertions along the same 
17 


242 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


lines both there and in Ohio. Suffice it then to state 
that, under his kindly leadership, the fathers diligently 
collaborated with him in the cause of souls; religion 
flourished; and the faithful were delighted at the zeal 
with which the way of salvation was kept open for 
them. 

No less a true son of Saint Dominic than a faithful 
pastor of souls, Father Miles showed the greatest con- 
cern about the religious observances of the community. 
They were carried out with a regularity and prompt- 
ness that were a source of edification to all. He 
himself set the example; for he felt that, as superior, 
he should lead the way which he wished the others to 
follow. When at home rarely did he miss the conven- 
tual exercises; nay, he would put himself to almost any 
inconvenience that he might be present at them. Gen- 
erally he was the first to appear in choir and at mass. 
In the internal government of the priory, with the 
exception of wearing the tonsure, he is said to have 
followed Father Wilson as his model, whose name he 
seldom mentioned without the qualification of “happy 
memory,’ and whose ideals he ever held up to his 
brethren as an inspiration.” 

Doubtless the future bishop was glad to be again 
in a house which he so greatly loved, and among a 
people for whom he had a special affection. However, 
Saint Rose’s without Saint Thomas’ College could 
hardly have been to him what it had been to him in 
times past with an institution in which his heart was 
wrapped up for many years, and which he felt exercised 
a strong influence not only for the good of his Order, 


186 One not infrequently sees “of happy memory” after Father Wilson’s 
name. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 243 


but also for the advancement of religion and Christian 
education. An early page will disclose that he cherished 
a hope of soon seeing the error of closing the College 
of Saint Thomas of Aquin rectified, if not even that of 
effecting its re-establishment. 

Another source of joy afforded by his return to 
Kentucky was the opportunity which it gave him of 
further aid to Saint Catherine’s Community of Domin- 
ican Sisters. He sought in every way to help them. 
Their annals join with tradition in telling us that this 
joy was mutual; and they show that the community 
still cherishes his memory in gratitude for his effective 
sympathy.” 

Father Miles’ missionary life in Ohio added to his 
reputation as a harvester of souls. No doubt this fact 
had its part in broadening his labors in Kentucky at 
the present period; for we now find him, in answer to 
calls from his brother priests of the diocese, journeying 
hither and thither in many parts of the state for ser- 
mons, retreats, spiritual exercises, or other functions 
of the ministry. Everywhere his efforts were produc- 
tive of good; nowhere did he fail to please either the 
clergy or the laity. His name was known and honored 
throughout the Mississippi Valley. 

Albeit Father N. D. Young, the provincial, had 
secured the erection of Saint Joseph’s, Somerset, Ohio, 
into a convent as early as 1834," he seems to have 
continued to govern that institution himself until 1836, 
for missionary labors and the lack of priests made it 
difficult to institute another superior. Father Miles’ 

17 Pages from a Hundred Years of Dominican History, p. 76. 


18 Letters patent dated December 23, 1834 (Archives of Saint Joseph’s 
Priory). 


244 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


term of office in Kentucky expired on May 1, that 
year. Accordingly, he now became prior of Saint 
Joseph’s, and appears to have been the first to hold the 
position there. In view of the fact that the selection 
of the first prior of a convent belongs to the provincial, 
and in default of documents to the contrary, we are 
inclined to believe that he was appointed to that office 
by Father Young, rather than elected by the commu- 
nity. Be this as it may, no better choice, nor one more 
welcome to the fathers, could have been made.” 

Thus the Father of the Church in ‘Tennessee now 
took up his residence at the mother church and convent 
of Ohio, which brought him into still more immediate 
touch with the beginnings of Catholicity in that state 
than his earlier stay at Zanesville. Here he showed the 
same zeal that had characterized his apostolate in his 
previous fields of labor, and won the affections and 
esteem of all with whom he came into contact. ‘The 
records show that, though prior, he took his turn with 
the other fathers on the missions attended from the 
monastery. It was another broadening of his views 
and experience, albeit he toiled there for only a short 
time. In its obituary notice of the bishop the Catholic 
Tclegraph says: “For many years he was pastor of 
congregations in Somerset and Zanesville in this dio- 
cese, where his zeal for the spiritual and temporal 
welfare of his flock and his most kind and genial man- 
ners will never be forgotten.” ”° 

Father Young’s appointment as provincial by the 

19 We have not been able to find any document of Father Miles’ ap- 
pointment or election as prior of Saint Joseph’s; yet it is certain that 
he became prior there immediately after the expiration of his term of 


office at Saint Rose’s. 
20 Edition of February 25, 1860. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 245 


Most Rev. Francis F. Jabalot read “Subject to Our 
will” (ad beneplacitum Nostrum). This General died 
in March, 1834. On May 26, 1834, his successor, the 
Most Rev. Benedict Maurice Olivieri, reappointed 
Father Young to the same office, placing the term of 
his office on the Monday following the third Sunday 
after Easter, 1837, which Monday fell that year on the 
seventeenth day of April. In February, 1835, Olivieri 
resigned the post of General for that of Commissary 
of the Holy Office, and was succeeded by the Most Rev. 
Thomas Hyacinth Cipolletti, whom Bishop Fenwick 
had sought to have appointed his coadjutor in Cin- 
cinnati.”* 

Meanwhile, Father Young either grew weary of his 
responsibility, or felt that Father Miles would make 
a more effective leader for the province; for, if we may 
judge from a letter of Cipolletti, he wrote to that Gen- 
eral more than once, praising the virtue, zeal, prudence, 
religious spirit, and ability of the future bishop, and 
suggested that it would be well to appoint him pro- 
vincial. But Father Cipolletti decided that the incum- 
bent should continue in office for the time specified in 
his nomination. Furthermore, the General determined 
to give the fathers of the province their first opportunity 
to elect their own provincial. He therefore instructed 
Father Young to convoke a chapter for this purpose 
at the close of his provincialship.” 


21 Letters patent of Young’s appointment (Archives of Saint Joseph’s 
Priory); Taurisano, Series Magistrorum Generalium, p. 14; Mortirr, 
Histoire des Maitres Généraux, VII, 474-476; Life of Fenwick, pp. 
261-262, 303. 

22 Cipolletti to Young, October 9, 1836 (Archives of the Dominican 
General: copy in Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province). Father Cipolletti 
simply signs this letter “Magister Ordinis”; but there is no doubt about 
its authorship. 


246 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Pursuant to the General’s instructions, the capitular 
fathers met at Saint Rose’s on April 17, 1837. They 
were the Revs. N. D. Young, R. P. Miles, J. T. Jarboe, 
S. L. Montgomery, T. J. Polin, J. V. Bullock, C. P. 
Montgomery, C. D. Bowling, James Hyacinth Clark- 
son, and Joseph Augustine Wilson.*’ Father Young, 
in accordance with the General’s orders, presided at 
the opening of the chapter. Their first act was to elect 
(by secret ballot) Fathers Miles and Jarboe and the 
two Montgomerys definitors, or the law-making body 
of the assembly. Possibly because it was really the 
first provincial chapter held in the province, several 
days were devoted to a consideration of its needs. One 
subject discussed was certainly the establishment of a 
college. 

Finally, they came to the selection of a new provin- 
cial. ‘This was on April 22, 1837, and Father Miles 
was elected on one ballot. One of the assembly, pos- 
sibly waiting to see the trend of affairs, evidently 
abstained from voting, for only nine votes were cast. 
Of these Father Miles received seven, and Father 
Polin two. Miles, we may take it for granted, gave his 
suffrage to Polin. Thus the subject of our narrative 
was elected provincial by a practically unanimous vote. 
The reader need hardly be told that the chapter proved 
a source of great rejoicing.” 

23 A number of these men had no constitutional right to take part in 
the chapter; from which we conclude that the General, in a subsequent 
letter (now lost), extended this privilege to all the fathers in order that 
the first election of their highest superior might the better represent the 
wish of the province as a whole. This supposition is borne out by an 
article in the Catholic Advocate of May 13, 1837. However, some of 
them did not attend the chapter. Doubtless they remained away lest the 


missions should suffer from their absence. 
*4 Manuscript acts of the chapter (Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province). 


PRIORS PROVINCIAL BISHOP 247 


In his letter to Father Young the General had 
ordained that, although the document of election should 
be sent to him for confirmation, the one chosen for pro- 
vincial should take up the office immediately that he 
was elected. Father Miles, therefore, began to fill that 
position on April 22, 1837. It is said that the province 
commenced at once to experience beneficial effects from 
his administration.” 

The chapter had taken up the question of a college, 
but deferred it for fuller consideration later. Father 
Miles, however, began to press the matter immediately 
that he assumed office; for the Catholic Advocate of 
May 13, 1837, speaking of the Dominicans and the 
election of their new provincial, says: “It is understood 
that they intend to establish a public College next year. 
Although the Order is more especially instituted 
for preaching and other duties of the ministry, yet it is 
considered that the education of youth may be made 
instrumental in preparing their members for the proper 
discharge of this most important duty.” Doubtless 
the presence of two such institutions near Saint Rose’s 
determined the selection of Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio, 
for the undertaking. The following notice in the Cath- 
olic Almanac of 1838 must have been sent in to the 
editor some time before the close of the previous year. 

There is a college now in progress of building on the convent 
grounds [at Saint Joseph’s], which will soon be finished, and will 
afford young gentlemen as many facilities of acquiring a thorough 
English, Classical and Mathematical education as are enjoyed 


in other literary institutions of the Union. The prospectus of this 
establishment will be published next year.7® 


25 See note 22. See also Catholic Advocate, May 13, 1837, which shows 
Father Miles acting in the capacity of provincial. 
26 Page 98. 


248 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Doubtless Father Miles foresaw that, under the 
existing circumstances, this enterprise would demand no 
little courage and sacrifice; but he was not one who 
would be deterred from any good by such difficulties. 
Meanwhile, Bishop Purcell, who had strange ideas of 
the life and privileges of religious, wrote to the new 
provincial to send the priests at Saint Joseph’s to Cin- 
cinnati for the diocesan retreat, although they made 
one in their convent every year. ‘The extraordinary 
and uncanonical procedure brought forth a reply from 
Father Miles which reveals the quiet, gentle strength 
and prudent tactfulness of the man, no less than the 
poverty of the community. 

Right Rev. Sir:— 

It would afford us great pleasure to comply with the request 
made by your Reverence that all the clergy should meet at Cin- 
cinnati for the purpose of making a spiritual retreat; but it would 
be attended with great difficulty on our part. Our very limited 
means render it morally impossible that we sheuld all attend. We 
have heretofore been accustomed to make our retreat annually at 
Saint Joseph’s. Should it please your Reverence to permit us 
to continue our accustomed course, it would be regarded as a great 
favour. If expedient, two of us will attend the Synod, as was 
our practice in Kentucky. 

A line from your Reverence, expressing your pleasure on this 
subject, will be gratefully acknowledged. 

With sentiments of the highest esteem and respect, 

Right Rev. Sir, 
I am your very obedient servant, 
R. P. Miles, Provincial. 
Somerset, October 28, 1837.77 

Father Cipolletti seems to have received the document 
of the future bishop’s election as provincial only late in 
the summer or early in the fall of 1837. October 1, 


27 Archives of Notre Dame University. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 249 


the same year, he sent a letter to the fathers of the 
province congratulating them on the choice they had 
made for their leader; and another similar in character 
to Father Miles himself.* Cipolletti was a superior 
man in every way. Nothing lay nearer to his heart 
than the welfare of the religious institute over whose 
destinies he presided. Perhaps none of the Generals, 
with the possible exception of Father Gaddi who estab- 
lished it, showed so friendly an interest in Saint J oseph’s 
Province for many, many years after it came into exis- 
tence. No doubt this kindly concern inspired the two 
documents just mentioned, both of which are delight- 
fully paternal and encouraging. 

Cipolletti’s letters could not but have been a source 
of inspiration to the new provincial. Unfortunately 
an event had already occurred, though apparently still 
unknown to either the subject of our sketch or his con- 
freres, which was not merely to thwart these good 
promises, but likewise to cast a gloom over the province. 
Bishop Flaget had long desired to have his diocese 
limited to the State of Kentucky. After the lopping 
off of Lllinois and Indiana through the erection of the 
See of Vincennes, in 1834, only Tennessee, a domain 
wherein Catholicity had been sadly neglected, remained 
to be separated from Bardstown’s original jurisdiction 
in order that the saintly prelate’s wish might be real- 
ized. 

When, therefore, the American hierarchy assembled 
at Baltimore, April 16-23, 1837, for the third provincial 
council held in that city, Bishop Chabrat urged the 
erection of Tennessee into an episcopal see, and asked 


28 Copies in the handwriting of Father Stephen Byrne (Archives of 
Saint Joseph’s Priory). 


250 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


that Father Miles be nominated its head. Indeed, apart 
from the tradition of Saint Joseph’s Province, there 
are reasons for believing that Doctors Flaget (then in 
Europe) and Chabrat had agreed on both these prop- 
ositions prior to the assembling of ‘the council, if not 
even before the former started abroad, in 1835. Ac- 
cordingly, the prelates of the council requested the Holy 
See to erect the Diocese of Nashville, and placed 
Father Miles’ name at the head of the list of priests 
which they forwarded for the selection of a worthy 
bishop for its government.” 

In answer to the appeal of the. Baltimore council 
Gregory XVI issued the Brief Universt Dominici 
Gregis, making Nashville an episcopal see, and the 
Bull A postolatus Officium, by which Father Miles was 
appointed its first bishop. Both documents bear the 


29 Sura, History of the Church in the United States, III, 608, 656; 
CLARKE, Lives of the Deceased Bishops, II, 149; Year Book of St. Mary's 
Church, Memphis, 1908, p. 47; Facts (Chattanooga, Tennessee), August 
18, 1894. Two letters of Bishop Francis P. Kenrick show that the vote 
of the Baltimore council was unanimous. At the same time, they prove 
that Doctor Kenrick had not lost his former prejudice against the 
Father of the Church in Tennessee. In that to Cardinal Fransoni (April 
26, 1837—Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. XII) he tells 
the prefect of the Propaganda that he would not have given his consent 
to Miles’ nomination, had not Bishop Chabrat “lauded his piety, zeal, 
and other gifts so highly.” Practically the same assertion is made in 
a letter (May 22, 1837) of Kenrick to the Rev. Paul Cullen, then rector 
of the Irish College, Rome, and later cardinal archbishop of Dublin 
(Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, VII, 295). As 
Doctor Kenrick was so anxious to express his views about Doctor Miles, 
he can not object to another recording a doubt whether the learned third 
bishop of Philadelphia would have had the courage to face the task which 
confronted the apostolic first bishop of Tennessee. Afterwards, however, 
this bias was succeeded by admiration. See An American Apostle (Life 
of Very Rev. M. A. O’Brien), pp. 141-142. The high regard in which 
the other bishops of the council held Father Miles is further shown by 
the fact that they also placed his name on the list of priests proposed for 
Natchez. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP asp 


date of July 28, 1837, were forwarded to America at 
the same time, and reached Baltimore late in October.°®° 
This action of the Holy See brought consternation to 
Saint Joseph’s Province of Dominicans, for the fathers 
felt that, in their state of poverty and with their small 
number of priests, they could not afford to lose so val- 
uable a man. ‘To them their beloved provincial seemed 
simply indispensable. 

We remember reading some years ago a letter of 
Father Thomas Martin, one of the most unselfish and 
efficient of Ohio’s early missionaries, in which he rather 
indignantly complained against the appointment. He 
declared that, if they were determined to make Father 
Miles a bishop, they should have had him appointed 
successor to Fenwick in Cincinnati, so that he could have 
collaborated with his brethren, instead of sending him 
to Nashville, where his services would be lost to them 
altogether. What Miles himself thought about his nom- 
ination is evident from the following reply to Bishop 
Purcell. 


Somerset, [Ohio], November 9, 1837. 
Right Rev. dear Sir:— 

Your favour of the third instant reached me this morning. I 
am apprehensive that my nomination to the See of Nashville will 
prevent any of our Fathers from joining you either in the retreat 
or synod. If I must accept, it will be necessary that we should 
meet in council and attend to the affairs of the Order, which will 
be much affected by my removal; and there will be no time to 
lose, as in that case I must hasten to adjust my affairs here and 
return to St. Rose. 

The loss of any efficient member of the Order at this time will 
be severely felt; and I do not see how I can in conscience accept, 


30 Archives of the Secretary of Briefs, Vol. 4929, Vatican Palace, Rome; 
HeErNAEz, Coleccion de Bulas, Breves y Otros Documentos, etc., II, 794; 
Bullarium de Propaganda Fide, V, 163. 


Abs THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


without compulsion. The Archbishop has informed me officially 
of my nomination, and I have requested him to send on the Bulls 
and other documents which he says are in his hands. If these 
contain a formal precept, I then have no choice; but if left 
free, I shall certainly remain so. 

I do not feel disposed to complain of my superiors, but I think 
there has been a strange blunder committed in my nomination. 
How could it ever have entered into the mind of any one to appoint 
a poor Religious, who cannot command one cent, in case he accepts, 
to a See where there is neither a church nor a clergyman, nor any 
means, that I know of, to procure either. I shall not even have 
a book except my breviary; and my brethren are not obliged to 
supply me. And in case I am taken from them without their 
consent, they will be illy disposed to assist me. Unless, therefore, 
the will of God manifests itself in a manner that I cannot resist 
without [sin?],°4 I shall feel myself bound under sin to refuse. 
May His holy will be done. 

I, am, 
Right Rev. dear Sir, 
Yours sincerely, 
RiiP2)MilessOrpe 
Provincial of the Province of St. Joseph. 
Right Rev. Dr. Purcell.?? 

This document speaks for itself. It is straightfor- 
ward, to the point, brief, strong, and clear; it breathes 
the true spirit of humility, obedience, and respect for 
authority; it reveals a well-poised mind and a noble 
character without self-interest, no less than a soul pos- 
sessed of much kindly strength; it marks a superior 
under whom one would rejoice to live and to labor. 

Evidently another Friar Preacher wrote a letter 
of protest to the Order’s General. Most likely this 
was N. D. Young, who wielded a ready pen; and he 

31 A word is torn out here, and the word sin, which suggests itself, 


would just fit in the missing space. 
32 Archives of Notre Dame University. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP Zo 


doubtless did so as much at Miles’ request as of his 
own accord—perhaps even in response to the entreaty 
and in the name of his confreres. Quite possibly, so 
strong was the desire to retain their provincial, the 
letter was signed by every professed member of the 
province. At any rate, on January 2, 1838, Father 
Cipolletti wrote to the fathers in general, stating that, 
because of their great loss, he himself was overwhelmed 
with grief when informed by his Eminence James 
Philip Cardinal Franzoni, prefect of the Propaganda, 
that Miles had been preconized bishop of Nashville. 
However, Cipolletti feared then, and still fears, to 
protest against the appointment; but if Father Miles 
himself will write directly to the Holy Father, begging 
to be relieved from such an honor for the good of the 
province and the American missions, then the General, 
in case his opinion is asked, will do whatever he possibly 
can in the matter.*® 

Although, owing to the sacred secrecy under which 
the Propaganda guards its documents of less than a 
hundred years of age, we have discovered no letter on 
the subject from the bishop elect to Gregory XVI, 
other sources show that he followed Father Cipolletti’s 
suggestion, and apparently made more than one urgent 
appeal to be freed from the glory of the miter. In 
fact, despite his strong opposition, the affair dragged 
on for nearly a twelvemonth. Rome’s inflexibility in- 
dicates that “the striking testimony” (praeclarum testi- 
monum) which Gregory declares in the bull of 
appointment he has received “from the late provincial 

33 Copy in Father Stephen Byrne’s handwriting (Archives of Saint 


Joseph’s Priory). In this letter Cipolleti appoints Father Young provis- 
ional provincial, so that the province may nct be without a head. 


254 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


synod of Baltimore of his [Miles’] piety, moral integ- 
rity, learning, and zeal and labor for the propagation 
of religion” continued to be urged at the papal court 
by persons anxious for his nomination. Possibly 
Bishops Purcell and Chabrat—and even Bishop Flaget 
himself, who was then in Kurope—were the responsible 
parties. 

Meanwhile, Father Miles labored on with the affairs 
of the province; but his state of uneasiness stood in the 
way of his efforts for its advancement. ‘The project 
which suffered the most from his appointment to a 
bishopric was that of the proposed new college, for it 
was not put into execution until more than ten years 
afterwards. When the positive order finally came from 
the Vicar of Christ that he must accept the dreaded 
dignity, he gracefully bowed to the will of heaven, and 


wrote to Bishop Rosati of Saint Louis: 
Right Rev. and dear Sir:— 
Having lately received a letter from the Cardinal Prefect of 





the Propaganda, in which his Eminence informs me that the Holy 
Father insists on my accepting the arduous office of Bishop, I have 
consented to do so. The consecration will take place on the six- 
teenth of September, in the Cathedral of St. Joseph, at Bardstown. 
It is my wish that your Reverence would be present on the occa- 
sion. Should it suit your convenience to confer this honor on one 
so unworthy, it will be regarded as a great favour, and one not 
to be forgotten. In the mean time I beg a share in your prayers 
and sacrifices. 
I am, 
Right Rev. and dear Sir, 
with sentiments of high esteem, 
Your Reverence’s humble servant and brother in Jesus Christ, 
R. P. Miles, 
Bishop elect of Nashville. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 


bo 
on 
wn 


Bardstown, August 22, 1838. 
Right Rev. Dr. Rosati, 
Bishop of St Louis.*4 


Father Miles had no doubt gone to Bardstown, im- 
mediately on the receipt of his orders from Rome, to 
inform Bishops David and Chabrat of his acceptance 
of the miter, and to engage the venerable David to per- 
form the august ceremony of consecration; but the 
aged prelate felt that he was too feeble to undertake 
so long and arduous a rite. ‘Then it was agreed that 
the honor should go to Doctor Rosati as the next 
senior bishop in the west. ‘There also it was doubtless 
decided that the event should take place in Bardstown, 
on September 16, and that invitations should be ex- 
tended to only the nearest ordinaries, for Father Miles 
had little taste for personal display, and his heart was 
too sad for exaltation. Bishops Flaget and Purcell 
were in Europe; but Bishop Kenrick of Philadelphia 
was invited because he had been a priest in Kentucky. 
When the reverend editor of the Catholic Advocate re- 
ceived the news he wrote: 

We have been very much gratified to learn that the Right Rev. 
Dr. Miles, some months since nominated by the Holy See to the 
newly erected See of Nashville, has, in consequence of letters just 
received from Rome, accepted the appointment. We have re- 
ceived no intelligence lately which has rejoiced us more. The 
Catholics dispersed throughout the State of Tennessee have long 
been in need of more spiritual aid than it has been in the power 
of the Bishop of Bardstown to extend to them. From the known 
talents, acquirements, and zeal of Bishop Miles we most con- 
fidently anticipate a rich harvest of spiritual blessings to his new 
flock. His appointment has afforded universal satisfaction, both 
to the Catholic Clergy and Laity, and to all who are acquainted 
with him. 


34 Diocesan Archives of Saint Louis. 


256 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The Consecration of Dr. Miles will take place in St. Joseph’s 
Cathedral, on Sunday the 16th of September. The Right Revs. 
Drs. Rosati, Kenrick and Bruté have been invited, and are ex- 
pected to attend on the occasion. Dr. Miles earnestly invites 
all the Regular and Secular Clergy of Kentucky to be present 
at the ceremony. We hope that all those whose occupations may 
allow will comply with his request.*° 


The Catholic papers of the country evinced no little 
delight when copying the Advocate’s statement. or 
instance, the Catholic Telegraph, Archbishop Purcell’s 
diocesan organ, in its issue of September 6, 1838, de- 
clares: “Our feelings of gratification and joy are in 
unison with those which our friends of the Catholic 
Advocate express in the followmg announcement.” 
Similarly, the United States Catholic Miscellany, con- 
ducted by Bishop England himself, says, on September 
8, 1838: “We copy the following very gratifying intel- 
ligence from the Catholic Advocate of Bardstown, of 
August 25. The last Provincial Council recommended 
the creation of the Diocese [of Nashville] and the ap- 
pointment of Doctor Miles.” 

Doubtless Father Miles looked forward to the event 
in fear and trembling, for he was to receive a dignity 
and to take upon himself a responsibility which he 
dreaded. Because of their intrinsic interest, no less than 
because of their place in our narrative and in the history 
of the Church in Tennessee, we must not omit two 
accounts of the consecration by eye-witnesses. One is 
evidently by a clergyman, the other by a chance spec- 
tator who was not of the faith. ‘The first must have been 
prepared with considerable care, for it reached the 
Catholic Advocate too late for the issue immediately 


35 Edition of August 25, 1838. Bishop Kenrick did not attend the 
consecration. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP ay) 


following the event, which appeared on Septembr 22, 
1838, and could not be published until that of the 
twenty-ninth of the month. 


THE CONSECRATION 
OM Et aARIGH TREVOR Pe NEES. DD. 1, 


This splendid ceremony took place in St. Joseph’s Cathedral 
on last Sunday morning. At an early hour, the church was crowded 
to overflowing. When everything had been prepared, the proces- 
sion of the Bishops and clergy moved in order from the Sacristy 
to the Sanctuary. The Right Rev. Joseph Rosati acted as Bishop 
Consecrator, and he was assisted by the Right Rev. Dr. Chabrat, 
Bishop Coadjutor of Bardstown, and the Right Rev. Dr. Bruté, 
Bishop of Vincennes. The Right Rev. Dr. David had been in- 
vited by the Bishop Elect to officiate as Bishop Consecrator, but 
his great age and growing infirmities prevented his acceptance 
of the invitation. The venerable old man however assisted at the 
function in which he was not able to participate.°® 

The Very Rev. Stephen T. Badin officiated as assistant Priest; 
the Very Rev. E. J. Durbin as Deacon; the Rev. Mr. [ Charles | 
Blanc as Subdeacon;** the Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., as Notary, 
read the Bulls of Consecration; and the Rev. F. Evremond, S.J., 
and the Rev. W. E. Clark acted as Masters of Ceremonies. The 
Rev. S. H. Montgomery and the Rev. Joseph Haseltine assisted 
the Bishop Elect as Chaplains. Many of the clergy of the Dio- 
cess, both regular and secular, were also present, and aided in 
the functions of the solemn sacrifice. 

The impressive and splendid ceremonies of the church, in the 
consecration of Bishops, were heightened in their effect by the 


36It was fortunate that Bishop David did not undertake to be the 
consecrating prelate; for in a letter, written September 17, 1838, to Sister 
Elizabeth, Union County, he tells her that a slight attack of illness 
obliged him to leave the sanctuary “ about the preface’ (Archives of 
Nazareth Academy, Bardstown). 

37 Through an oversight, when giving a brief account of Bishop Miles’ 
consecration in An American Apostle (page 59), we stated that this 
priest was the Rev. Anthony Blanc, later archbisop of New Orleans. 
Doctor Blanc was consecrated in 1835. The man mentioned here belonged 
to the Diocese of Bardstown. 


18 


258 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


manner in which they were performed. All admired the perfect 
ease and self-possession; the gravity, the dignity, and unction with 
which the venerable Consecrator, the Right Rev. Dr. Rosati, per- 
formed all the lengthy functions of the day. There is in his voice 
and whole manner something peculiarly impressive and moving—- 
something that decorates and sets off in its proper form the splen- 
did ceremonial of our church. 

All were impressed, too, with the appearance of the Bishop 
Elect. Though deeply affected, he went through the whole cere- 
mony with firmness, self-possession and dignity. Whether making 
his solemn profession of faith in the hands of the consecrating 
Bishop, or answering the solemn questions propounded to him in 
regard to his future conduct—whether prostrate in prayer at the 
foot of the altar, imploring the prayers of the Saints in heaven, 
or receiving the imposition of hands from the Bishops, and being 
anointed with the mystic unction—the emblem of his consecration 
to God—whether bearing the Book of the Gospel upon his neck, 
as the yoke which he was in future more especially bound to bear; 
or, clad in all the insignia of his episcopal office, walking proces- 
sionally through the congregation and giving his benediction— 
throughout the whole solemn functions, he awakened a deep inter- 
est in all present. 

The consecration sermon was preached by the Very Rev. John 
Timon. It was an appropriate and excellent discourse on the min- 
istry established by Jesus Christ. He proved from natural 
reason and the Scriptures that Christ established a regular gra- 
dation amongst the ministers of his church—that to their charge He 
had entrusted the sacred deposit of faith and of the sacraments, 
and that to their judgment are the faithful to attend, if they do 
not wish “to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.” 
His address to the Bishop Elect at the close of the discourse was 
full of unction and tenderness. He alluded to the difficulties and 
trials with which he would have to contend in his new Diocess, 
and hoped that the same success might crown his labors as had 
crowned those of the Right Rev. Bishops Flaget and Rosati, who, 
in a few years, had reared such beautiful monuments to religion. 

Bishop Miles expects to be in Nashville on Sunday, the 14th of 
October. Truly, he goes like the Apostles, without purse or scrip, 
or money in his girdle: but we hope and trust that he has a large 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 299 


portion of their spirit, and that his zealous labors will be crowned 
with similar success. He will bear with him the kind wishes and 
the prayers and tears of many friends. God prosper him in his 
arduous labors! ! °° 

The second account is taken from The Record which 
reprinted it some years ago from a source unknown to 
us. First, its writer, evidently a visitor in Bardstown, 
tells how he accidentally heard on the morning of Sep- 
tember 16, 1838, that a Catholic bishop was to be con- 
secrated in the cathedral that day. So great was his 
curiosity to witness the ceremony that he deferred his 
breakfast and hastened to the church at the first sound 
of the bell. But the bell was for an early mass, through 
which the good man remained in the vain hope of seeing 
a bishop consecrated. However, he was rewarded by the 
sight of an extraordinary manifestation of piety on the 
part of the worshippers at mass and in receiving holy 
communion. He records his impressions at length, and 


then proceeds to say: 

I ascertained, before leaving the church for my breakfast, that 
the ceremony of consecration, which I had so much anxiety to wit- 
ness, was to commence at ten o’clock. Before the hour arrived, 
the bell, whose solemn sound I had previously admired, seemed to 
thunder into my ears audi verbum Domini. I returned to the 
church. It was pretty well filled; I seated myself in an eligible 
pew, convenient to the altar and the pulpit. Presently there en- 
tered about one hundred of the students of St. Joseph’s College, 
and ascended to the gallery. Soon was every pew filled to over- 


flowing—not a seat was vacant. 


38 Catholic Advocate, September 29, 1838. It should have appeared 
in the previous edition—September 22. It is worthy of note that the 
Rey. Martin John Spalding, who acted as notary for the consecration, 
later became bishop of Louisville and archbishop of Baltimore; while the 
Rey. John Timon, who preached on the occasion, afterwards became the 
first bishop of Buffalo. 


260 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


At this point in his account the spectator tells. of 
the entrance of some one hundred and thirty young 
ladies from Nazareth Academy, who occupied seats 
prepared for them in front of the pews. ‘The tribute 
which he pays them and the noted institution which they 
represented is beautiful, but it can scarcely be said to 
have formed a part of the ceremony. Consequently 


we pass on to the rest of the article which states: 

Presently a throng, robed in all the sublime splendor of the 
Catholic ritual, crowded into the sanctuary, amongst whom were 
four who had already been honored with the Mitre. I regret 
exceedingly that my intimacy with the Catholic liturgy does 
not enable me to picture the character of this truly sublime and 
imposing ceremony. Of the number who thronged the sanctuary, 
one of the mitred dignitaries performed the sacrifice of the Mass, 
which I discovered to be intimately connected with the consecrating 
service. His appearance of itself was imposing. He seemed to be 
officiating in that place for which he was intended by nature; his 
manner, so graceful and dignified, seemed to add much to the 
impressive scene. His intellectual countenance appeared as though 
he was alone with subjects celestial in their nature. 

During the consecration, the Litaniae Sanctorum, together with 
many other hymns in Latin and English, were chanted. The music 
awakened every sense of my understanding, aroused every feeling 
of my soul, and pealed into my heart this truth, that homage is 
due from man to the Author of his being. I wondered not, after 
listening to this music, that Orpheus of old harmonized the pas- 
sions of the Grecians, and subdued the ferocity of the beasts, 
and even tranquilized the tortures of the infernal regions. 

After the Gospel was read, one of the sacred order, having 
invoked a blessing from above, retired from the thronged sanctuary 
and ascended the pulpit. He delivered a short but truly eloquent 
and appropriate sermon, and returned to afford an opportunity for 
the continuance of this mysterious and certainly interesting part 
of the Catholic liturgy. An offering, apparently consisting of 
loaves and small casks of wine, was made by the new Bishop to 
the Prelate Consecrator, in accordance with their ancient and 


dhs ‘ Set aa 
Cyd Me Se ong 
hit PL at otk iy 
fl ad - i) vs Al, 
Sha z i Cie, lly a 
fof rt "s 


- 


& .. 
Tink wy ~ 


- 








THE RIGHT REV. RICHARD PIUS MILES, O. P. 


PRIOR, PROVINCIAL, BISHOP 261 


peculiar custom. This unchanging character of their religious 
rites forcibly reminded me of the unalterable attributes of the 
Deity. 

When the consecration of Bishop Miles was completed, it was 
announced by one of the inmates of the sanctuary that he had to 
pass through the aisle of the church. It was instantly cleared of 
its crowd. He then, accompanied by two others of the same rank, 
walked down and back, at the same time invoking from on high 
benedictions on all present. Robed in the vestments of a Bishop, 
he presented an appearance truly grand and imposing. His mild- 
ness and humility seemed to impress the crowded assembly with 
respect and with veneration. When the ceremony was ended (which 
lasted for upwards of two hours), the noise created by the im- 
mense crowds retiring was drowned by a burst of rich melody 
from the organ, which gave rise to the most pleasing sensations. 
The skillful musicians, in accordance with the occasion, executed 
a piece animating and appropriate. 

Thus ended the consecration, which surpassed in beauty, 
grandeur, and solemnity anything I had ever had the satisfaction of 
witnessing. I seriously concluded that this ceremony bore, un- 
questionably, an impress of some supernatural institution, for its 
sublimity could never have been reached by human intellect.°? 


Father Miles was now a member of the American 
hierarchy. He had become the first bishop of ‘Tennessee 
in the first cathedral west of the Alleghany Mountains. 
History was still a-making in old Bardstown. A 
beautiful character had been consecrated with a beau- 
tiful ceremony, accompanied with the pomp, glory, and 
splendor of the Catholic ritual; yet the congratulations 
heaped upon him must have sounded almost like irony 
or insult. ‘Truly was he to enter upon his new field 
of toil “like the apostles, without purse or scrip, or 

39 We regret that the clipping from The Recerd which we used for 
the above does not give the date on which it appeared; but we remember 
that it was a good many years ago. Another cause for regret is that the 


late Father Louis G. Deppen, then editor of The Record, did not tell 
when and where the original appeared. 


262 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


money in his girdle’. Fortunately he possessed “a 
large portion of their spirit.” Without co-laborers, 
poverty was his sole companion. All that he could com- 
mand was a courage quickened by the order of God 
received through His Vicar on earth, and, as the editor 
of the Advocate tells us, his “known talents, acquire- 
ments, and zeal,” to which we may add “virtue of a 
heroic character.” 


CHAPTER XII 


EARLY TENNESSEE 


THE early history of Tennessee vies with that of Ken- 
tucky in romantic glamour. The early settlers of both 
states were largely of the same stock, had the same 
difficulties with which to contend, showed the same 
prowess in danger, possessed the same spirit of chiv- 
alry, and were guided by the same views in their west- 
ward migration. Perhaps this explains, in part, why 
the character of their descendants is strikingly similar 
even to this day, while their sympathies and _ politics 
have much in common. Indeed, climatically and typo- 
graphically the two commonwealths seem to have been 
intended by nature to form only one. 

Just when the white man first set foot on the soil of 
Tennessee will possibly never be known with absolute 
certainty. However, there are many who, not without 
good reason, are strongly inclined to the belief, if not 
even convinced, that the no less ill-fated than historic 
expedition of Hernando de Soto (1539-1542) made its 
way into the southern part of the state, halted for about 
a month on the Chickasaw bluff, where stands the pres- 
ent City of Memphis, and there crossed the Mississippi 
River into Arkansas. The Indian village of Chisca, 
they maintain, occupied the same site that is now oc- 
cupied by Memphis. ‘They base their arguments on a 
comparison of the topography of the country described 
by the companions of De Soto with that of southern 

263 


264 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


‘Tennessee, the location of Chisea, and the fact that 
religious articles of Spanish make have been found on 
Jackson Mound, just below the southern limits of 
Memphis." 

If these unfortunate Spaniards wandered so far 
north, they were beyond question the earliest of the 
Caucasian race to visit that part of the American con- 
tinent. ‘There were a number of clergymen with the 
expedition, and among them two at least, Fathers John 
de Gallegos and Louis de Soto, seem certainly to have 
belonged to the Order of Saint Dominic.” Thus, in 
ease the sad remnant of wayfarers reached ‘Tennessee, 
two of the first priests in the state were confreres of the 
first bishop of Nashville. Circumstances rendered it 
impossible for the missionaries to do any work among 
the Indians throughout the long and perilous journey. 
After the battle at Mauilla (or Mavilla) they could not 
even say mass for the Spaniards, for all their wheat, 
flour, vestments, and church vessels were lost in a con- 
flagration at that place.° 

Again, it is well within the realm of probability, 
though not susceptible of proof, that Louis Joliet and 

1 The great majority of those who have really studied the accounts 
of De Soto’s peregrinations place Tennessee and Memphis on the route 
he followed. There is a very good article on the subject by Walter 
Malone in the Memphis Commercial Appeal of July 2, 1909. The late 
Brother Maurelian of the Christian Brothers College, Memphis, who was 
thoroughly versed in the history of Tennessee, and especially in that of 
Memphis, was convinced that De Soto passed that way; and he used to 
show religious articles that had been found on Jackson Mound. 

2 SHEA, Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 
p. 45. These two fathers died after the expedition passed under the leader- 
ship of Louis de Moscoso who succeeded to command after the death 
of De Soto. 

3 SHEA, History of the Church, I, 112; Winsor, Narrative and Critical 


History of America, II, 249; Spanish Explorers in the Southern United 
States (In Original Narratives of Early American History), p. 193. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 265 


Pere Jaques Marquette touched on the western shore 
of 'Vennessee on their voyage down or up the Missis- 
sippi in 1673.4 Robert Cavelier de La Salle made a 
similar voyage down the great Father of Waters in 
1682, erected Fort Prud’>homme on the site of our 
modern Memphis, and raised the flag of France over the 
stockade in attestation that he took possession of the 
country in the name of his Catholic majesty, Louis 
XIV. With La Salle were two Franciscan Recollects, 
Fathers Zenobius Membré and Anastasius Douay.” 
Unless, therefore, De Soto’s expedition extended into 
Tennessee, the French were the first white race who trod 
the soil of the state, and the first priests within its limits 
either the Jesuit Marquette, or the Franciscans Membré 
and Douay. None of these men could have labored 
among the Indians at the time; but at least the two sons 
of Saint Francis must have offered up the holy sacrifice 
of the mass where Memphis now stands. In any case, 
the discoverers of the country were of the Catholic faith. 
Fort Assumption (Assomption), so named in honor 
of the Blessed Virgin, succeeded Prud’homme in 1714.° 
By this time, in fact, a cordon of small French forts 
and posts had begun to spring up, which soon extended 
4The Jesuit Relations and Allied Docunents (edited by Thwaites), 
LVIII, 95 ff. Other volumes of the same work touch on the same topic. 
It is generally admitted that Joliet and Marquette journeyed as far south 
as the neighborhood of the Arkansas River; and that Marquette’s journal 
of the voyage describes embankments which correspond with those on the 
Tennessee side of the Mississippi, which suggests that he probably stopped 
at some of these places. See also CHARLEVoIx-SHEA, History and De- 
scription of New France, III, 178 ff. 
5 SHEA, History of the Church, I, 326 ff; Catholic Encyclopedia, IX, 
378; Bancrort, History of the United States, III, 167-168; Ramsey, 
Annals of Tennessee, p. 39; Puetan, History of Tennessee, pp. 5, 313; 


RANDALL-Ryan, History of Ohio, I, 143-144. 
6 PHELAN, op. cit., p. 313; GoopspeED, History of Tennessee, p. 62. 


266 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


from Quebec to the Great Lakes, and thence to New 
Orleans. Through these, in spite of the small number 
of French in the New World, there was a constant com- 
munication between the vast Gallican possessions. 
Seeking new discoveries and conquests, trapping wild 
animals, plying his trade with the Indians, acting under 
an inborn spirit of adventure, responding to the call 
of his wander-lust, or obeying orders from the civic 
authorites, back and forth the Gaul wandered between 
north and south, or from post to post. Quebec, Mon- 
treal, or the country of ‘the Great Lakes lay at one end 
of his journey; New Orleans at the other. Oftentimes 
he was never less alone than when alone; for then his 
poetic soul could, undisturbed, contemplate and revel 
in the unrivalled beauties of primeval nature. Per- 
haps it is this mental build that enables the French, 
even though brought up in the most refined society, to 
content themselves in the wilds of forest or desert, and 
has had its part in making them such splendid mis- 
sionaries among uncivilized peoples.‘ 

The Vicariate Apostolic of Quebec was established 
in 1657. In 1674 it became a bishopric, whose jurisdic- 
tion, besides Canada, soon embraced all the then known 
parts of the present United States except the English 
colonies along the Atlantic seaboard and those of Spain 
on the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Mexico.” The 
Mississippi River was the great artery of trade, travel, 
and communication between the southernmost and 
northernmost possessions of France. Up and down 

7 The ability of the French to accommodate themselves to such untoward 
circumstances is a well-known characteristic of that nation. 
SLe Vénérable Francois de Montmorency-Laval Premier Evéque de 


Québec (Souvenir of the Second Centenary of his Death) ; SHEA, History 
of the Church, II and III, passim. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 267 


its waters the missionaries made their way to and from 
their fields of labor, whether among the aborigines or 
their own fellow-countrymen. 

Fort Prud’homme, or Fort Assumption, was a 
convenient resting-place for these zealous messengers of 
the Gospel.’ Despite the lack of documents, therefore, 
there can be no doubt that they often halted there, ad- 
ministered the grace of the sacraments to the whites 
connected with the post, and sought to christianize the 
red men who happened to be in the vicinity. Quite 
possibly, too, they made other landings on the eastern 
bank of the river between the present states of Ken- 
tucky and Mississippi. However, the Indians in Ten- 
nessee do not seem to have offered an attractive or prom- 
ising field for apostolic labor; for it appears certain 
that the missionaries made no concerted effort for the 
conversion of the tribes of that state. 

Perhaps the explanation of this apparent neglect is 
to be found in the character and location of these Indians 
themselves. ‘They were all largely wandering tribes, 
without fixed villages. The Shawnees, on the lower 
Cumberland, were so migratory that it is difficult to 
determine their real abode. The Cherokees loved the 
mountains and highlands,” lived in the east, and were 
more settled; yet they spent the greater part of the 
time on the war path, or in the common hunting grounds 
of middle Tennessee and Kentucky. Besides, they were 
near the English possessions, and far removed from 
the highway of travel followed by the missionaries. 
The Choctaws held the upper Cumberland; while the 

9 Fort Assumption was built at the mouth of Wolf River (the Margot 


of the French), and on the present site of Memphis. 
10 The word Cherokee is said to mean “upland field.” 


268 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Chickasaws claimed and used the territory between the 
Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, and were bitter ene- 
mies of the French. Furthermore, the strongholds of 
the last two tribes were in Mississippi, where they could 
be more conveniently reached from the south. In these 
facts, no doubt, we have the principal reason why 
Tennessee was passed by for a more promising apos- 
tolate on either side of the great watercourse, both 
above and below.** 

French traders, in small numbers, made their. way 
among the Indian tribes scattered through the state. 
As early as 1714, a trading post was established on the 
present site of Nashville. Possibly there were others in 
the state, of which no memory or trace has been left. 
In 1736, it was discovered that one Christian Priber, 
whose name and position suggest that he was an Al- 
satian, lived among the Cherokees. He seems to have 
spent a part of his time in eastern Tennessee. He 
knew the language of the Indians perfectly, sought 
to bring them to a more civilized manner of life, and 
to ally them with the French, as whose agent he acted.” 
These traders were Catholics, but there is no indication 

11 Catholic Encyclopedia, XIV, 508; PHELAN, op. cit., passim; BANCROFT, 
op. cit., III, passim; The Catholic Journal of the South, December 21, 
1912; The Century Cyclopedia of Names, passim. 

12 RAMSEY, op. cit., pp. 45, 79; PHELAN, op. cit., pp. 10, 114; History 
of Nashville (edited by Wooldridge), p. 38; Crayton, History of David- 
son County, Tennessee, p. 17; Apvatr, History of the American Indians, 
pp. 240-243; Stevens, History of Georgia, I, 164-167; Nineteenth Annual 
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part I, pp. 36-37. It is 
hard to say which the Rev. B. Stevens stretched the most, his imagination 
or his prejudice, in his harsh characterization of Priber as a Jesuit. There 
is no record of a Jesuit or any other missionary of that name in the north, 
west, or south. Adair does not call him a priest, and there is nothing 


to show that he was. Unfortunately, J. W. Powell, in the Ethnological 
Report, was deceived by Stevens, and calls Priber a Jesuit. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 269 


that priests of their nationality ever visited their posts 
of business or the red men whose friendship they cul- 
tivated. 

After the French and Indian War, the territory 
claimed by the French on the lower Mississippi, to- 
gether with all the country west of the great river, 
passed into the hands of Spain. ‘Thus the Catholic 
missions there fell under Spanish domination. Quebec 
retained its jurisdiction over those parts ceded to Great 
Britain, for the Treaty of Paris (1763) guaranteed 
religious liberty to their inhabitants. The Quebec Act 
(1774) still further confirmed this freedom of con- 
science, but the suppression of the Society of Jesus 
(1773) had greatly crippled the missionary force in the 
near and middie west. With the recognition of the 
independence of the United States by England, Sep- 
tember 3, 1783; the appointment of Father John Car- 
roll prefect apostolic of the new American republic, 
June 9, 1784; and his nomination as bishop of Balti- 
more, November 6, 1789, the missions on the southern 
shores of the Great Lakes were severed from their 
allegiance to Quebec. However, owing to the occupa- 
tion of those parts by British forces, the ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction over them remained in doubt until several 
years after Carroll’s consecration. 

F’rom the end of the French and Indian War to 
the appointment of Father John Carroll prefect apos- 
tolic, ‘Tennessee was in the extreme southern portion 
of the Diocese of Quebec. Then it became subject to 
Baltimore. Fort Assumption no longer played any 
role in the scheme of colonization. Yet it was seized by 
the Spanish in 1794, They erected Fort San Ferdi- 


270 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


nando, and remained in possession for four years.”® 

During all this time, and from the recession of the 
southern and western country to France by Spain 
(1800), no less than from the Louisiana Purchase by 
the United States (1803), until the establishment of 
the Diocese of Nashville, western 'Tennessee appears to 
have had no more than an occasional visit from a priest 
while on a journey up or down the Father of Waters. 
There are no records of even such calls; yet it seems 
improbable that the country should have been left so 
long untouched by some missionary of Louisiana, 
Mississippi, or Missouri. ‘Thus, although Tennessee 
was first discovered by Catholics, and the earliest 
attempts at colonization of the state were made by them 
in the west, these pioneers failed to plant the standard of 
Catholicity permanently within its boundary. ‘Those 
who brought it this blessing, as will now be seen, came 
in from other directions. 

Successful occupation of the lands of Tennessee by 
the white man began in the east. ‘The French had 
failed in the west principally because of their lack of 
numbers and the want of sympathetic support by the 
authorities abroad. ‘The English-speaking colonists 
prevailed on its soil through their own bravery and 
perseverance. Just when the first of them passed over 
the mountains into the present limits of the state will 
possibly never be known. However, it seems almost 
certain that hunters, explorers, and traders with the 
Indians made their way into 'Tennessee at a somewhat 

13 Bancroft (op. cit., III, 368), without giving his authority, says 
that Fort Assumption was razed in 1740. But Phelan (op cit., p. 314) 
says that it was superseded by Fort San Ferdinando de Barancas; while 


Keating (History of the City of Memphis and Shelby County, p. 90) says 
that the old fort continued as a trading post with “varying fortunes.” 


EARLY TENNESSEE 271 


earlier date than into Kentucky—apparently in the 
second or third quarter of the eighteenth century. 
The glowing reports which these forerunners of civili- 
zation carried back concerning the abundance of game, 
the beautiful country, the healthful climate, and the 
fertile stretches of land beyond the Alleghanies soon 
fired the imagination of the brave and ambitious, with 
the result that a tide of emigration was not slow to set 
in towards the new west, where, it was thought, wealth 
certainly awaited the hardy adventurer. 

Practically all the first and the greater part of the 
earlier settlers were from Virginia and North Carolina. 
They were a fearless people, but they had need of great 
courage in order to face the dangers and difficulties 
which confronted them. In no part of America did the 
pioneer meet with more stubborn or more persistent op- 
position from the red man. There was almost perpetual 
warfare between the two races for over a quarter of a 
century.'* Another source of trouble was the uncertain- 
ty whether the country was a part of Virginia, or a part 
of Carolina. This doubt gave rise to the historic Wa- 
tauga Association, which was perhaps the first attempt 
at an organized civil government by the English west 
of the Alleghany Mountains. 

The pioneers lived under the laws enacted by this 
association from 1769 to 1777, when, at their own re- 
quest, they were annexed to North Carolina. Removed 
as they were from the scene of disturbance, the people 
of Watauga showed much resentment at the aggression 

14 The early history of Tennessee is as bloody as that of Kentucky. 
Candor demands the admission that right lay with the Indians, for they 


were the owners of the soil; the whites were encroachers. The same is 
true of all our early history. 


272 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of the English government, and later, by their prowess, 
contributed not a little towards turning the fortunes of 
war in favor of the Americans in the south, at a mo- 
ment when the cause seemed all but lost to the patriots 
of the Revolution. North Carolina, however, wasted 
little courtesy on her new acquisition, left its inhabitants 
to fight their own battles with the Indians, and finally 
voted to cede the territory to the United States govern- 
ment. In 1784, therefore, they declared themselves the 
State of Franklin, free and independent of North Car- 
olina. Jonesborough became its capital; while chival- 
rous, picturesque John Sevier, a soldier of the Revolu- 
tion, and ‘Tennessee’s most noted Indian fighter, was 
elected governor. 

Carolina soon took steps to protect her rights; but 
Sevier held his office until its expiration, in 1788, when 
the State of Franklin ceased to exist evenin name. For 
two years more Tennessee was again a part of North 
Caroiina. They were a period of dissatisfaction, large- 
ly because the parent state manifested scant interest in 
the backwoodsmen beyond the mountains. Finally, in 
1790, Tennessee was taken under the charge of the 
national government, and became “The Territory of 
the United States South of the Ohio River.” However, 
owing to the public policy of treating with the Indians 
which left the pioneers unprotected. against their deadly 
foe, discontent was scarcely less than it had been before. 

Still another disturbing factor was an embargo which 
the Spaniards placed on the navigation of the Mis- 
sissippi River by the people of the United States, and 
a refusal to grant them the right to deposit goods at 
New Orleans. It was no more than natural that the 
west should fret under these two restrictions; for they 


EARLY TENNESSEE 23 


made its produce practically valueless, by leaving it 
without an approachable market, or burdened it with 
almost prohibitive costs for its transportation. While 
by far the greater number of the settlers in Tennessee 
were too patriotic to lend an ear to the suggestions of 
General Stephen Miro and Francis Baron de Caronde- 
let, successively governors of Louisiana, that they 
should forswear allegiance to the United States and 
ally themselves with the Spanish possessions, there were 
those who felt disposed to adopt such a measure in order 
to be relieved from the drawback thus placed upon their 
traffic. Happily this difficulty was removed, in Octo- 
ber, 1795, by a treaty with Spain. 

The cup of the Tennesseeans’ joy was finally filled 
on June 1, 1796, when their territory was accorded the 
right of statehood, it being the sixteenth commonwealth 
of the Union, and the second erected west of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains. John Sevier became its first govern- 
or. Knoxville'was its capital; but this honor, as was 
only natural, soon gravitated towards a more central 
city until, after many years (1843), it definitely settled 
on the brow of Nashville. 

When recorded in detail, though it is but sober his- 
tory, all the above reads much like an overdrawn novel. 
To tell its story in full hardly belongs to a work of the 
character of the present volume; for up to this point, 
and long after, there is little of the leaven of Catholicity 
in the state’s progress, be it social, political, religious, or 
commercial. Haywood, Marshall, Phelan, and other 
historians of ‘Tennessee will repay any one for the time 
spent over their pages.’ Suffice it here to say that all 

15 However, these authors are at times too drastic in their strictures 
on the French and Spaniards. 
19 


274 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


these authorities agree that the real settlement of the 
state began on the waters of the Watauga River, in 
1768 and 1769. Ever onward the bold pioneers pushed 
their way through trials, hardships, war, and bloodshed, 
occuping one section after another, until they gained the 
mastery everywhere. As the reputation of the country 
spread abroad, colonists came from all directions. By 
the time the territory became a state the population had 
risen to more than sixty thousand. 

Just when the first English-speaking Catholics en- 
tered the limits of Tennéssee, whence they came, or where 
they located seem problems which can not now be de- 
monstratively settled. However, the civic history of the 
state and geographic position make it almost certain 
that they found their way into the east, and that the 
greater number of them took up their abodes in or 
around Knoxville. Documents, which will be produced 
later, are also plainly in favor of such a conclusion. 

Most of the earliest colonists were of English, Irish, 
and Scotch descent. Among them were names (Bean, 
for instance, *°) which would suggest Catholics in Mary- 
land. But as those who bore them in ‘Tennessee seem, as 
a rule at least, to have gone from Virginia or North 
Carolina, they afford no certain clue to the religion of 
their possessors. Similarly, one runs across a number 
of early settlers with distinctively Catholic Irish names. 
Some of these appear to have migrated from the Caro- 
linas and Virginia. Whence others came is not known. 
Doubtless a few of them were born in the Emerald Isle 

16 Phelan’s history (p. 5) says that “the history of Tennessee as a 
distinctive individuality begins with the erection, in 1769, of William 
Bean’s cabin” farther in the forest than his predecessors had ventured. 


His son, Russell Bean, was the first white child born in Tennessee (ibid., 
Did). 


EARLY TENNESSEE 275 


itself, and gradually made their way into Tennessee. 
Beginning with the brutal Cromwell, it is known, thou- 
sands upon thousands of Irish youths of both sexes 
were sent to the southern colonies. Others emigrated 
of their own accord. By far the greater number of the 
children of these, born of mixed marriages and in places 
where they had no priests, were lost to the Church.” 
Yet in other instances, particularly when several 
Catholics located in the same neighborhood, the faith 
was kept and handed down from generation to genera- 
tion through a long series of years. 

Thus it is highly probable, if not even certain, that 
some of those with Irish names who figured in the ear- 
hest steps of Tennessee’s making were Catholics. They 
could, of course, enjoy none of the consolations of their 
religion. For this reason, some of them possibly returned 
to Maryland, went to Kentucky, or moved on to the 
former Spanish possessions. Most of the descendants 
of those who remained must eventually have lost the 
faith—a sad commentary on the folly of Catholics who, 
for mere worldly advantages, settle where they can not 
practise their religion, or have their children brought up 
under the influence of the Church, and grounded in its 
doctrine. Defections, broken hearts, and souls lost in- 
evitably follow. ‘This somber truth is written on every 
page of the early Catholic history of all our states, no 
less than of that of Tennessee. 

The first priest of whose presence in beautiful eastern 
Tennessee there is any record was the Rev. William 
Rohan, mentioned in a previous chapter. The rough 

17 There can be no doubt that a large proportion of our American 


non-Catholics who claim to be of “Scotch-Irish” origin are descended 
from ancestors circumstanced as described in the text. 


276 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


draft of a letter from Archbishop Carroll, then prefect 
apostolic, to Father Rohan himself indicates that he was 
given faculties for the missions in Virginia.’ Thence 
he seems to have made his way into Tennessee, which he 
possibly believed fell within his field of labor. Bishop 


Spalding, who must have known him personally, writes: 

After the departure of F[ ather] Whelan [in the spring of 1790], 
the Catholics of Kentucky were again left without a pastor. In the 
following summer, however, there arrived among them, in company 
with a caravan of emigrants from North Carolina and East Tennes- 
see, the Rev. Wm. de Rohan.!9 He seems to have been born in 
France, of Irish parentage, and was a reputed doctor of the Sor- 
bonne. Some chance had thrown him on the American shores; 
and a few years previous to his arrival in Kentucky, he had re- 
ceived faculties for a mission in Virginia, from the Very Rev. Dr. 
Carroll. Shortly afterwards he had travelled to Tennessee, where 
he remained for more than a year. 

In Kentucky, he said Mass for the Catholics, visited the sick, 
and administered the sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony; but 
he abstained from hearing confessions, as he did not at first believe 
that his powers extended to this distant mission. He subsequently 
changed his opinion on this subject, on the ground that Kentucky 
was a county of Virginia at the date of his faculties, which had 
been given for the latter State, or a portion of it.?° 


Doubtess Father Rohan performed the same spiri- 
tual functions for the few Catholics in eastern 'Tennes- 
see while he resided there. Perhaps it would be no 


18 Baltimore Archives, Case 9, S 9. The letter is not dated, but it 
certainly belongs to 1785 or 1786. 

19 Some give the name as de Rohan, others give it as Rohan. In the 
letter referred to in the preceding note, and in another of March 31, 1794 
(Baltimore Archives, Case 9 A, I 2), Archbishop Carroll calls him Roan. 
Rohan seems to be the correct name. In a number of Father Badin’s 
letters it appears as Roane. 

20 Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky, pp. 48-49. The same author 
(ibid. p. 49) tells us that Father Rohan spent the last years of his life 
at the seminary in Bardstown, where he died in 1832. Doctor Spalding 
himself was a student there from 1826 to 1830. 


BARLY TENNESSEE PAM: 


stretch of fancy to believe that he also heard confessions ; 
that, when a doubt arose in his mind as to whether he had 
such a right, he induced some of the faithful to accom- 
pany him into Kentucky, where he thought they would 
find Father Charles Whelan; and that others, unfortu- 
nately for their souls, preferred to remain behind. 
Possibly among these latter was gallant John Sevier 
—one of ‘Tennessee’s most noted men, governor of 
the State of Franklin, the first and several times after- 
wards governor of the new State of Tennessee, con- 
gressman, senator, the idol and ever beloved and trusted 
servant of the people. “There is a widespread. tendency 
to think that he was a Catholic. While a member of 
Congress in Philadelphia, and afterwards in Washing- 
ton, his diary shows that he attended Catholic church- 
es.”*' ‘Tennessee had neither a priest nor a Catholic 
house of worship. Perhaps this spiritual privation led 
him to attend the Presbyterian church with his wife, as 
well as to suffer her to bring up their children in that 
creed. It was probably his wish to have a Catholic 
clergyman and church nearer to his home that caused 
_him to offer to sell enough land for a Catholic settlement 
21 W. A. Henderson, Washington, D. C., May 10, 1909, to Rev. John K. 
Larkin, Johnson City, Tennessee (Diocesan Archives, Nashville). Parts 
of Sevier’s diary are published in the Tennessee Historical Magazine of 
October, 1919, and January and April, 1920. No mention is made of 
Philadelphia. But in the April, 1920, issue of the Magazine, covering the 
years 1812-1815, there is frequent mention of Sevier’s attendance at 
Catholic services in Washington City—so often, indeed, that one suspects 
that a thorough study of his life might result in positive proof of his 
Catholicity. Tennessee historians generally say that he was born in 
Virginia, and was of Huguenot descent. It is probable, however, that 
it is a case of the wish being father to the thought, and that Sevier was 


no more of a Huguenot than many Americans with Celtic names, despite 
their contention, are descendants of the so-called Scotch-Irish. 


278 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of one hundred families, and to donate a tract for their 
pastor. 

The case of Hugh Rogan is at once sad and edifying. 
He was born in County Donegal, Ireland, where he 
married Miss Nancy Duffy of Tyrone. He belonged 
to the “Irish Defenders; and it would seem that he left 
his native land no less in order to escape the police who 
sought him because of his associations with this patriotic 
society, than to build up a home for himself and young 
wife and child in the New World. Sailing on the last 
merchant ship that left England for the colonies before 
the American Revolution, he heard in mid-ocean of the 
Battle of Bunker Hill from vessels returning with 
wounded British and American prisoners. In Philadel- 
phia, where the cargo was landed, he obtained employ- 
ment from a Quaker with tory sentiments. However, 
he soon enlisted for the first man-of-war fitted out for 
colonial service, but an accident prevented him from 
making connection with his ship. 

Later he went to North Carolina, where, with Daniel 
and Thomas Carlin, he engaged in mercantile trade, 
their place of business, because of the faith of the three 
men, being known as the “Catholic store.” Here Rogan 
secretly played the part of agent for the patriots, whom 
he kept informed of the plots and intended raids of 
the tories. However, his days there as a merchant were 
short, for he was soon employed in helping to survey the 
western country. This was about 1789. In Tennessee 
he showed much prowess in the contests with the In- 
dians. For his services he received a pre-emption for six 
hundred and forty acres of land which is supposed to 
have lain where the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 
now stands. 


) | 


EARLY TENNESSEE 279 


Finally, Hugh Rogan exchanged this pre-emption 
for the same number of acres near Gallatin, Sumner 
County, about thirty or thirty-five miles northeast of 
Nashville. Wauith the two horses, which he received in the 
bargain, he now started for the seashore, whence he in- 
tended to sail for Ireland that he might bring his wife 
and child to Tennessee. In Virginia, unfortunately, a 
miscreant not long from Donegal told him that his wife 
had married again. The broken-hearted man then re- 
turned to his home. But in 1795 or 1796, Rogan heard 
from his wife, and immediately set off for his native 
land, after an absence of more than twenty years. Per- 
haps not from the time he left Philadelphia had he seen 
a priest. Doubtless, therefore, the occasion which this 
visit to Ireland afforded him of hearing mass and receiv- 
ing the sacraments gave the sturdy pioneer as much joy 
as the re-union with his wife and son, the latter of whom 
had now grown into vigorous young manhood . 

Our immigrant’s stay abroad was brief, for he hurried 
back to his home in Sumner County. There Francis 
Rogan, the second and last child, was born in 1798. A 
long period of spiritual desolation followed. Hugh 
Rogan prospered temporally: but it would seem that 
he never again saw a priest. We may trust that his ar- 
dent faith, good life, and efforts to serve the Divine 
Master in the best way he could under the circumstances 
sufficed for his salvation. It is noteworthy that this 
sturdy son of Erin was, in principle, a strong abolition- 
ist. He possessed slaves only because of the necessity 
of the times. His dying injunction to his sons was that 
they should follow his own practice—never to sell a col- 
ored person, except in order to prevent a family from 
being separated, and never to retain the money obtained 


280 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


through such a bargain. Faithfully did they obey their 
father’s last behest. 

God granted the prayer of Mrs. Rogan that she 
would not die without seeing a priest. The way in 
which it happened seems almost providential. In 1831 
Francis Rogan married Miss Martha Lytle Read, who 
belonged to two of Tennessee’s most noted families, the 
ceremony for which was performed by a Methodist cir- 
cuit rider by the name of Fountain E. Pitts, although 
Miss Read had been brought up a Presbyterian. Mrs. 
Rogan’s strong faith and deep piety profoundly im- 
pressed her daughter-in-law. Francis had grown care- 
less about his religion. Yet, when his wife accidentally 
met the Rev. William Byrne, founder of Saint Mary’s 
College, in Kentucky, at Miss Jeanne Floyd’s, an 
elderly Catholic lady who kept a pastry shop at her 
home in Gallatin, she told this good priest the story of 
her aged mother-in-law, and asked him to go home with 
her. The reader need hardly be told that his unexpected 
appearance brought untold joy to this pious soul. He 
gave her the sacraments, and baptized her only grand- 
child. 

Mrs. Hugh Rogan lived to see her daughter-in-law 
received into the Church. Bernard, the son who was 
born in Ireland, remained single. Francis did not take 
up the practice of his religion until a few years after 
his mother’s death. Yet his home, which was that of his 
father, had become the hospitable and welcomed stop- 
ping place for the missionaries, no less than the station 
where mass was said for the scattered Catholics of the 
neighborhood. Such it continued for several genera- 
tions of Rogans, all of whom stood firm in their faith.” 


22 Diary of Mrs. Clarissa (Rogan) Desha; Manuscript sketch of Hugh 


EARLY TENNESSEE 281 


Without doubt this case of spiritual starvation was by 
no means solitary in the early stages of Tennessee’s 
progress. More likely there were many others of which 
nothing is known. ‘The children grew up without 
priests or instruction, contracted mixed marriages, and 
denied the faith. Perhaps for this very reason they 
became all the more prejudiced against Catholicity. 

The Frenchman, Timothy De Montbrun who is not 
inaptly called the father of Nashville, offers an instance 
in some ways like unto that of Hugh Rogan. Many 
stories have been told about him. One is that he fought 
under gallant Louis Joseph Montcalm; and that after 
the fall of Quebec, in 1759, he made his way to 'Tennes- 
see, where he settled on the site now occupied by the 
state’s capital city. He was an Indian trader. For 
some years he lived in a cave with his wife and children. 
Possibly he felt that such a place afforded better pro- 
tection against the fickle aborigines. AI authorities 
appear to agree that De Montbrun’s settlement at 
Nashville antedates by some years the earliest approach 
of even the hunters and explorers from the eastern 
colonies. The first English settlers, who arrived late 
in 1779 and early in 1780, found him there. After- 
wards he built a house at “Eaton Station.” ** Clayton 
says of him: 

Rogan (Nashville Diocesan Archives); Facts (a paper), Knoxville, Ten- 
nessee, August 18, 1894. The manuscript sketch is undated and unsigned; 
but in a letter of July 6, 1894, the Rev. Thomas V. Tobin tells Father 
William Walsh, editor of Facts, that he is sending “Miss Rogan’s sketch 
of her ancestors,” that he believes in its veracity, and that Hugh Rogan 
deserves more than a passing notice in the history of the diocese (Nash- 
ville Archives). 

23 Haywoop, Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee, p. 94, 


and passim; Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, pp. 192-193, and passim; 
PHELAN, History of Tennessee, p. 108, and passim; History of Nashville, 


282 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The family of Demonbreun was therefore the first European 
family that ever occupied the site of Nashville. Abating all 
mythical traditions, more or less of which have been naturally 
associated with one who ventured into this region at so early a 
period, there are facts enough to warrant the conclusion that the 
Demonbreuns were here in advance of the first American settlers 
from fifteen to twenty years. One of the streets of the city is 
named in honor of the venerable Timothy.?4 

Professor Clayton’s book is dated 1880, and it states 
that De Montbrun’s descendants still resided in Nash- 
ville, and had in their possession the watch and gun 
which he carried in the siege of Quebec at the time of the 
defeat which decided the fate of the French colonies in 
North America. Evidently he took pride in his French 
blood; for the old trader’s soul overflowed with delight 
at the time of the visit paid Nashville, in May, 1797, by 
the three exiled sons of the Duke of Orleans, the eldest 
of whom afterwards occupied the throne of France 
under the name of Louis Philippe. Again, in 1825, 
the year before his death, the aged frontiersman had 
a similar experience in the presence of General La 
Fayette. No doubt his joy on this occasion was all the 
greater because he could speak to the man who had so 
largely contributed towards the defeat of the nation that 
had wrested Canada from his compatriots..”° 

Timothy De Montbrun seems not only to have en- 
joyed a good reputation in Nashville, but also to have 
p. 38, and passim; THomas, Old Days in Nashville, p. 17; Barr, Souvenir 
of Saint Mary's Cathedral, p.9; Facts, August 18, 1894; Nashville Herald, 
Aprils; (1909, 

24 History of Davidson County, Tennessee, pp. 192-193. The historians 
of Tennessee, who knew little about French, give this pioneer different 
names, evidently writing it as it sounded in English. The name which 
we use is French, and it is that given to the father of Nashville by 


Bishop Flaget in his diary, as quoted by Spalding. 
25 History of Nashville, pp. 95-96, 102; CLayTon, op. cit., pp. 197, 204. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 283 


stood high with the people. Probably no other man 
in the state was better educated. Facts which will soon 
be presented show that, though there was neither church 
nor priest in the city, he retained the faith, and did not 
hesitate to profess it; from which we may conclude that 
he did whatever he could to instill the true religion into 
the minds and hearts of his children. ‘The father of 
Nashville and his family, there appears little reason to 
doubt, were the city’s first Catholics. 

There are English names in the early annals of Ten- 
nessee which, as has been said, would indicate Catholics 
in those of Maryland. Possibly some of these men 
appealed to Archbishop Carroll for a priest, and the 
venerable prelate directed Father Badin to investigate 
the matter. At any rate, the missionary of Kentucky 
writes to Baltimore’s prelate on February 28, 1799: 


I expected Mr. Thayer would have one more congregation; viz., 
[that] in Madison County. But it is about being dissolved, several 
of them being dissatisfied, others having lost their lands, others 
having none; they are now exploring Tennessee. I have written 
twice to the Governor of that State in order to procure an ecclesi- 
astical settlemant there. I think that for 1,000 pounds as much 
land might be procured there at this day as would at a future time 
support all the clergy in your diocese. The above emigrants and 
others about me intend to settle themselves about one hundred miles 
from this [ place? ].7° 

A few months later, June 3, 1799, Father Badin 
again writes to the archbishop: “The Governor of Ten- 
nessee and another gentleman, his partner, wrote to me 
about forming a [Catholic] settlement of one hundred 


families in the State, and offers me a handsome seat 


26 Baltimore Diocesan Archives, Case 1, E 12. The reader must re- 
member that Father Badin was a Frenchman, and expect to find some 
Gallicisms in his letters. We have taken the liberty of omitting a “the” 


66,99 


which he sometimes uses before Tennessee, and an “a” one or two times. 


284 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 
for a Priest.”*’ There were then four missionaries 
in Kentucky, which gave Father Badin more leisure to 
explore for scattered members of the faith. So he 
writes a third time to Doctor Carroll on October 9, 
1799: 

As to Tennessee, I know of no compact settlement of Cath- 
olics; tho’ many Irish people, etc., I think, are scattered here and 
there, and would at the appearance of Priests flock together. Such 
beginnings would be but little encouraging, if there was not [a| 
settlement made up of Marylanders. I intend to travel thither 
this fall.28 | 

Thus early then appeals for spiritual assistance must 
have been received from Catholics in Tennessee. John 
Sevier, who had Landon Carter for his partner in land 
speculation, was the governor of the state. The minds 
of the Catholics in Madison County, Kentucky, were 
turned towards the south because some of them had lost 
their lands through the conflicting titles of the early 
settlers. Father Badin’s project of a Catholic colony 
on Sevier’s possessions failed for reasons which he gives 
in a letter to Archbishop Carroll on August 4, 1800. 


Here he writes: 

Concerning the Catholics of Tennessee I have lately been in- 
formed that there were nearly one hundred families of them in 
Hawkins County, not far from Knoxville. They are mostly of Irish 
breed and [a] satisfactory account was given to me of their 
fidelity to the principles of [the] faith. I have written to a French 
Gentleman there who lives with Governor Blount, and makes an 
open profession of his religion. When I receive further intelligence 
I will faithfully transmit it to Your Lordship. The Governor of 
Tennessee set on his land too great a price; so that none of my 
parishioners intend any more to settle on Obey’s River, where the 
Governor’s tracts lie. And consequently the offer he made to me 


27 [bid., Case 1, E 14. 28 [bid., Case 1, E 16. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 285 


of a handsome piece of land for the Church, etc., is to this day of 
no ayail.?9 

The Frenchman who lived with ex-Governor William 
Blount was most likely James Dardis whose name will 
appear several times in the course of these pages, and 
whose faith can not fail to edify. Evidently Father 
Badin did not take his intended journey; for neither in 
this letter nor in any of his voluminous correspondence 
with Doctor Carroll until eight years later does he men- 
tion a visit to Tennessee. He is ever careful to tell his 
superior of all that he does, and his failure to speak of 
a journey to that state is positive proof that he made 
none. Father Anthony Salmon died in the first part of 
November, 1799; Father John Thayer’s inability to 
manage his missions gave the vicar general trouble; and 
the influx of Catholics into Kentucky grew daily. 
These factors, no doubt, rendered it next to impossible 
for him to leave the state at the time intended in order 
to visit the faithful farther southwards. We wonder 
what became of the goodly collection of Catholics in 
eastern Tennessee in the meantime. 

Four years after the last letter quoted, Archbishop 
Carroll took up in earnest the question of having a west- 
ern see erected. Father Badin writes to the Baltimore 
prelate on the same subject, March 16, 1805. In the 
course of his letter he tells Doctor Carroll that he en- 
closes a communication from Judge James ‘T’wyman of 
northern Kentucky, which he had intended to forward 
at an earlier date.- Then he adds: 

29 Ibid., Case 1, F 3. The Hon. William Blount had been the governor 
of Tennessee while it was a territory. No doubt it is from some of the 


Catholic families then in eastern Tennessee that not a few of the so- 
called Scotch-Irish scattered through the south are descended. 


286 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


As Mr. Twyman speaks of the Catholics in Tennessee, this 
reminds me that I have lately received by several channels some 
information respecting them which is of good omen. I wrote them 
a letter, by which I gave them notice that, should Priests arrive 
in Kentucky, as I expected, I should next summer or fall visit 
them. There are at Nashville several Catholics of good name, one 
of which is my countryman.°? 


Here we have further proof that Father Badin had 
not yet visited ‘Tennessee, as well as another indication 
that the Catholics scattered here and there through the 
state continued to appeal for the bread of life, but found 
no one to give it to them. FEvidently Father Badin’s 
“countryman” was none other than Timothy De Mont- 
brun, the father of Nashville. Most likely he was one 
of those who wrote to Kentucky’s overworked mission- 
ary. ‘Twyman’s reference to the Catholics in Tennessee 
adds nothing new or important; still it deserves in- 
corporation in these pages as another stone in the fabric 
of the history of early Catholicity in that fair common- 
wealth. The Judge’s words are: 


I am much pleased that we are about to have an Archbishop 
in America, and as much or more so that we are to have a Bishop 
in Kentucky. I say in Kentucky, as this State and Tennessee 
are to compose the Diocese. [I fancy] that his residence will 
probably be in Kentucky, as very few Catholics reside in the 
State of Tennessee, compared to Kentucky.*! 


Prior to this time (December 6, 1804), the indefati- 
gable Badin had written to the archbishop: “About ten 
days ago I was honored with your favor dated October 
15, by Mr. Gough, to which you request an immediate 
answer on a subject which I have much at heart; viz., 
the erection of an Episcopal See in this State.” ‘Then 

30 [bid., Case A Special, L 9. 


31 James Twyman, Scott County, December 24, 1804, to Father Badin 
(Baltimore Archives, Case 10, E 13). 


EARLY TENNESSEE 287 


he proceeds to give his opinion as regards “other in- 
tended dioceses contiguous to that one which shall be 
established in Kentucky”, in the course of which he 
says: I concur in your opinion that a Bishoprick should 
be erected so as to comprehend both states of Kentucky 
and. Tennessee.” *° 

Although other missionaries had arrived in Kentucky 
before the close of 1805, from that time until more than 
two years later the name of ‘Tennessee is conspicuous in 
the Baltimore archives for its absence. Finally, in the 
middle of a long letter of Father Badin to the arch- 
bishop, begun on March 10, but not finished until 
April 30, 1808, and dealing with all sorts of matters, we 
find the following brief paragraph: “I have received 
from Knoxville a letter written by a certain Mr. Patrick 
Campbell in the name of the Catholics of that vicinity, 
who invite me to visit them. At the persuasion of Mr. 
Nerinckx I have promised to go to that country next 
fall.”°* This time the tireless missionary was able to 
fulfill his engagement; for on his return to Kentucky, 


he wrote to Doctor Carroll: 
Near Bardstown, 7th January, 1809. 
Most Rev. Father in God:— 

Your last favor was dated 30th September; and I had the honor 
to answer it on the 4th November. Since that epoch, I visited 
the Catholics of Knoxville, and returned soon enough to attend 
the Court of Louisville. I had the good fortune to obtain the 
company of Mr. Ignatius Gough just returned from your State; 
to travel safe through the horrid Cumberland Mountains; to be 
sheltered from rains, and enjoy a puncheon bed at night. I re- 


32 Ibid., Case A Special, L 10. 

33 Ibid., Case 1, I 6. The last installment of this letter is dated May 
30; but the ending of the document, together with the fact that Badin 
wrote to the bishop again on May 12, shows that May 30 was an over- 
sight for April 30. 


288 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


mained only eight days at Knoxville, where I found six or seven 
Irish Catholic families, with a good will to adhere steadfastly to 
the visible body of the Church. Would to God they were as anx- 
ious to belong to her ‘soul! I heard only four confessions, and 
baptized twenty persons of different ages, and preached four 
times in the State-house. Hic meta laborum. 

However, I am nowise disheartened. I hope for better success 
on a second visit, which I promised to make next October. Sacred 
vestments were procured, and promise given me to purchase for a 
chapel a beautiful lot of two acres on the edge of the town and 
banks of Holston River. As the time of my next visit is precisely 
fixed, I am made to hope that I shall see a larger congregation. 
I am apprehensive that, the land-titles being there fully as un- 
certain as in Kentucky, the ‘Bishop of Bardstown will have but 
few diocesans in that State. The soil is represented as very fer- 
tile about Nashville, Duck River, Tellico, etc.; but I have seen 
very few desirable spots in the parts through which I travelled.** 

The above document leaves no doubt but that this 
was Father Badin’s first visit to Knoxville. Similarly, 
its tone and the absence of all reference, both in it and 
in his other letters, to any prior apostolic journey to 
Tennessee make it certain that this was also the first 
time that he had ever entered the state. On September 
1, 1809, he wrote to Archbishop Carroll that he would 
soon go to Knoxville again; and in a letter to the same 
on September 23, he says: “I shall myself leave the 
State next week to be at Knoxville on the first Sunday 
of October.” *® After his return to Kentucky, he writes, 
December 4, 1809: 


I was at Knoxville and preached before the Legislature on the 
first and second Sunday of October. I baptized four adults, 
revalidated several marriages, had a few more penitents and com- 
municants than last year; and instead of building a chapel in 
town, [I] advised the purchase of a tract of land for the main- 
tenance of a clergyman. ‘The State lands are sold [for] only 


34 Ibid., Case 1, J 1. 35 Ibid., Case 1, J 4 and 5. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 289 


$100.00 for one hundred acres, payable yearly in ten install- 
ments.°6 


Hight months later Father Badin paid east Tennes- 
see his third and last visit of spiritual mercy. On this 
occasion he wrote to Archbishop Carroll from the City 


of Knoxville itself, May 10, 1810: 
Most Rev. Father in God:— 

My last was dated 2nd March. I had the honor to write three 
or four times since your last favor was received. Mr. James 
Dardis, the principal Catholic of this place, will take this with 
him on his journey to your city. He takes charge of $30.00 for 
Mrs. Henry, which you will have the goodness to receive, unless 
he could be introduced to her personally. Mr. Dardis will be 
able to say more than I could write about the infant Church of 
Knoxville, which I call Saint Andrew. There are about twelve 
[ Catholic] families unconnected, and many more stragglers, who 
live at a distance, whom I might gather in one fold, if time per- 
mitted me to stroll in the country in search of stray-sheep.?! 


36 [bid., Case 1, J 6. 

37 Ibid., Case 1, J 8. After the arrival of Father Nerinckx in Kentucky, 
he and Father Badin were accustomed to name a mission before a church 
had been built. This was done in the present instance. Wailson’s Gazette 
of Knoxville announces, Saturday, May 19, 1810: “Tomorrrow, at four 
o’clock, the Rev. Stephen Theodore Badin, Roman Catholic Priest from 
Kentucky, will preach, at the Court-house, on the Resurrection of our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” 

James Dardis was an influential man at Knoxville in the early days 
of the city. He was one of the first aldermen, a successful merchant, 
and a director of the city’s earliest bank. Because of his honesty and 
good judgment he seems to have been liked and trusted by all. There 
was also a Thomas Dardis who was a lawyer in the city as early as 1800— 
likely a brother, or at least a relative, of James. Doubtless he too was 
a Catholic. The two names of Patrick Campbell, who wrote to Father 
Badin in 1808 (see note 33) leave little doubt concerning his origin and 
faith. 

Wilson's Gagette of June 16, 1810, has the following item: “LOST— 
On Piles Road, between Knoxville and Major William Campbell’s Ferry, 
a Large Pocket Book containing: Ist, a small silver plate wrapt up in 
linen; 2ndly, some papers which can be of service to nobody but the 
owner; 3rdly, some small pamphlets. Whoever shall find and return the 


20 


290 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Towards the end of his letter, after speaking of 
affairs in Kentucky, Father Badin adds: “You will 
oblige me and this congregation to send, by Mr. Dardis, 
to Knoxville an altar stone. The supply which you had 
the goodness to bestow at my last visit in Baltimore is 
quite exhausted.” And the document ends with: “I 
return to Kentucky tomorrow morning.” 

Western Tennessee had as yet received little atten- 
tion from the inrush of settlers. But Nashville, in the 
center of a prosperous agricultural district, was fast 
becoming a town of much promise. Some Catholics 
settled there, possibly headed by Timothy De Mont- 
brun, had appealed more than once to Father Badin 
for spiritual aid. So now the zealous missionary finally 
gave that place a visit, doubtless being the first priest 
ever in the city or in central Tennessee. On his return 
home, Saint Stephen’s, he wrote to Archbishop Carroll, 


August 20, 1810: 

On the 17th of June I visited a small congregation of eighty 
souls in Barren County [ Kentucky], on Green River, which had 
never been visited but by the Rev. Mr. Nerinckx. I was then on 
my way to Nashville, where I was cordially received by Mr. 
Priestly and other acquaintances, but found very few Catholics.** 

This brief account clearly indicates that Father 
Badin felt that Nashville offered little prospects for the 
Church in the immediate future. He rather placed his 
hopes in Knoxville. Indeed, his letter on the tenth of 
the preceding May shows clearly that he intended to 
continue his visits to eastern ‘Tennessee; and in the 


same to Mr. William Campbell, or Capt. William Evans, shall be rewarded 
for his trouble. 
24th May, 1810. SACL: Bading’ 

We are indebted to Miss Catherine White and Miss Alberta Koen of 
Knoxville for these finds in the Gazette. 

38 Jbid., Case 1, J 9. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 291 


course of the last communication from which we quoted, 
telling of his many engagements, he says: “I am ex- 
pected in Knoxville the last week of October.” Nay, 
Wilson’s Gazette (Knoxville), November 3, 1810, an- 
nounces: “The Rev. Stephen T’. Badin, Roman Catholic 
Priest, will preach on Baptism, in the Court House 
in this place, tomorrow at three o'clock.” However, 
though he must have been ready to start on the journey, 
something evidently detained him at home. 

Thus Knoxville seemed on the point not only of 
having a Catholic church, but even of soon becoming’ 
a center of an extensive mission. Possibly, now that 
Kentucky had a bishop, Father Badin aspired to be- 
come the apostle of Tennessee, as he had been that of 
Kentucky.” Yet, as far as documents and indications 
go, eastern Tennessee did not see a priest from the time 
of his departure, May 11, 1810, until after Father Miles 
was consecrated bishop of Nashville, or for nearly 
thirty years. It is one of the saddest silences in the 
annals of our American Church. No wonder anti- 
Catholic prejudice there became almost insurmountable. 

Doctor Spalding tells us that Kentucky’s missionary 
wrote on the margin of the report of his diocese which 
Bishop Flaget sent to Rome in 1836, that he (Badin) 
made four apostolic excursions into Tennessee.*° The 
same statement, as will soon be seen, is made by F'ather 
Badin in a pamphlet which he wrote on the Diocese of 
Bardstown. Again, the Hon. B. J. Webb, in a lecture 
on his personal reminiscences, speaks of Father Badin’s 

39 Dear Father Badin, it is a pity that he was not endowed with a 
more judicial temperament, a milder disposition, and a gentler speech. 
The country has had no missionary who more richly deserved the miter 


on the score of zeal and labor. 
40 Life of Flaget, pp. 235-236. 


292 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


long riding circuits, and facetiously remarks: “He told 
me himself of a short ride he had once taken, in com- 
pany with my father, from Bardstown to Nashville.” * 
Thus this noted priest made four journeys to Tennes- 
see (three to Knoxville, and one to Nashville), of all 
of which he has left brief accounts over his own hand. 

In the report which he sent to Rome, April 10, 1815, 
Doctor Flaget says simply: “In the neighboring State 
of Tennessee there are about twenty-five families of 
Catholics who are deprived of all the aids of the Church. 
A good many years ago, they were visited once or twice 
by a priest from Kentucky. Not as yet has it been pos- 
sible for me to call on them.” * Similarly, in an article 
on the “State of the Catholic Religion in Kentucky 
and the Neighboring States,” which he wrote some eight 
months after his return to France, and which appeared 
in a French paper of date December 8, 1819, Father 
Badin says: “Tennessee, which is a part of the same dio- 
cese, has not been visited by any missionary. At least 
we have received no information to that effect.”* By 
this, however, he evidently means that no other priest 
than himself had gone there; for less than two years 
later he writes: 

The diocese [of Bardstown] embraces six large states—Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. There 
are priests and churches in all these states, except that of ‘Tennes- 
see. As yet, this state, owing to its great distance and other obsta- 


cles, has been visited only four times, and that by the senior 
missionary of Kentucky; [that is, by Badin himself]. He brought 


41 Wess, Reminiscences of a Lay Catholic in Kentucky, p. 5. 

42 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. III. The typewritten 
copy made for us reads “Tandem enim possibile miht fuit ad eos per- 
gere,;” but the context and other documents to be seen later show that 
the copyist should have written “nondum” instead of “tandem.” 

4370’ Ami de la Religion et du Roi, December 8, 1819. 


EARLY TENNESSEE 293 


together a small congregation at Knoxville, its capital city. May 
the words of the prophet be fulfilled in this state: I will collect 
them, as the shepherd gathers his flock with the call of his voice, 
for I have redeemed them; and I will multiply them as before. I 


will bring them from the peoples, and they will bear me in mind 


in the furthermost places.“ 


Father Badin, it is true, had called the little mission 
at Knoxville Saint Andrew’s; yet it is evident that no 
church was erected there. Similarly, there is no record 
and no indication of a house of prayer having been built 
at Fort Prud’homme or Fort Assumption, where Mem- 
phis now stands. Thus Tennessee, although its settle- 
ment had begun early, had never seen the time when it 
could boast of a Catholic church. 


44 Origine et Progrés de la Mission du Kentucky, pp. 24-25. The same 
appears in the Annales, I, No. II, p. 41. 


CHAPTER XIII 
FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


A well-defined and persistent tradition in Nashville 
teaches that the building of the first Catholic church in 
that city was occasioned by the construction of the first 
bridge over the Cumberland River within the municipal 
limits. This bridge was a splendid structure supported 
by large stone piers, the remains of which may still be 
seen, at low water, a little north of the Woodland Street 
suspension bridge. Miss Jane Thomas describes it as 
“eovered over and weather-boarded like a house,” with 
windows on either side to let in the light." Perhaps this 
explains why it is some times called “the wooden 
bridge,” and at others “the stone bridge.” Unfortu- 
nately, it did not prove high enough when larger boats 
began to enter Nashville. For this reason, it was taken 
down about 1855; yet even as late as 1880 it was con- 
sidered to have been the best bridge that had so far 
spanned the Cumberland.’ 

The date of the construction of this bridge coincides 
with facts now to be recorded to substantiate the tra- 
dition just mentioned. ‘The contract for building it was 
awarded to Messrs. Stacker and Johnson of Pittsburgh; 

1 Old Days in Nashville, Tennessee, p. 54. The proto-bridge extended 
from the present Main Street, East Nashville, to the short alley which 
now runs from the river to the Public or Court Square. An early 


map of the city shows that this alley was called Bridge Street. 
2 CLAYTON, op. cit., p. 204; History of Nashville pp. 102, 306-307, 326-327. 


294 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 295 


and the History of Nashville, edited by Wooldridge, 
says: “The Nashville Bridge Company was organized 
on August 19, 1819, and an installment of five dollars 
per share was required to be paid August 31. The 
architects and builders of the bridge came from Penn- 
sylvania, the announcement being made in January, 
1819 [1820], that Mr. Stacker, one of the contractors 
for building the bridge, left Pittsburgh, December 8, 
1819, with thirty mechanics.” * 

On the way down the Ohio, other workmen were 
obtained at Cincinnati and Louisville. Many of these 
mechanics were Irish Catholics. When they reached 
Nashville, and discovered that there was neither church 
nor priest in the city, as the story goes, they were so 
discouraged that they declined to remain for the con- 
struction of the bridge. ‘Those interested in the enter- 
prise, therefore, promised to build a church, and sent 
post-haste to Kentucky for a missionary to visit them.* 
All this synchronizes with what seems to have been 
Father Robert A. Abell’s first pastoral journey to 
Nashville, and bears out the Catholic tradition of the 
city. For instance, Father James T. Lorigan writes 
in the Catholic Encyclopedia: 


The first authentic records of a priest in Tennessee are con- 
tained in the archives of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Nashville, when 
Father Abell came (1820) from Bardstown to attend the few 
Catholics then living in Nashville. Shortly after his arrival, 
Father Abell undertook the building of the first church in Ten- 
nessee, at Nashville, a small building on what is now Capitol Hill.° 


3 Page 306. 4 See also History of Nashville, p. 499. 

5X, 705. The Rev. John K. Larkin makes the same assertion in the 
Nashwuille American of June 26, 1910. A recent search failed to uncover 
the records used by Fathers Lorigan and Larkin; but many of the dioc- 
esan papers were lost when they were transferred from the old cathedral. 
At the time of writing their articles, these two priests were not aware 


296 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Bishop Flaget had ‘sent another account of his dio- 
cese to Rome the year before (October 18, 1819), in 
which he told the prefect of the Propaganda: “In 
Tennessee there are scarcely thirty Catholic families; 
and these have almost lost every sentiment of religion. 
The priest who visited them from time to time has 
returned to France. If God spares my life, I will 
make a visitation of that state next spring.”® When 
the appeal came for spiritual aid in behalf of the work- 
men on the bridge, the bishop possibly decided to send 
Father Abell to Nashville at once, and to await fur- 
ther developments before taking his intended journey. 

Be that as it may, there seems no room for doubt that 
Father Abell was the first priest placed in care of 
Nashville. From Saint Anthony’s, Breckinridge 
County, as a center he attended many missions in west- 
ern Kentucky. Doubtless it was there, possibly after 
a tour of his other charges, that he received word to go 
to Tennessee. Webb seems certainly in error, when he 
states that Father Abell visited Nashville only once 
from Saint Anthony’s. It is beyond question either 
that he accompanied Bishop Flaget on such a journey 
in 1821, or that they went from Breckinridge County, 
where Father Abell was then pastor.‘ So again, be- 
sides the Catholic tradition of Nashville, there are in- 
dications that this noted missionary was in the city a 
number of times while he looked after the interests of 
the Church in western Kentucky. Perhaps the experi- 
of the Badin documents at Baltimore which are given in the previous 
chapter. 

6 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. IV. Father Badin was 
certainly the only priest of the Bardstown Diocese who had visited 


Tennessee. 
7 Webb speaks also of this journey on page 346 of his Centenary. 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 297 


ence in Tennessee recorded in the Centenary of Catho- 
licity belongs to his first call to the south, and Mr. 
Webb understood him to say that it was his only jour- 
ney to Nashville from Saint Anthony’s. 

Be that as it may, the story, apart from the correction, 
is too authentic, full of interest, and pertinent to be 
omitted. But we shall let the venerable historian tell it 
in his own charming way. 

Once only, while stationed ‘at St. Anthony’s, he was called as 
far south as Nashville. At the time referred to there were few 
Catholics in Tennessee, and not over five families, nominally 
Catholic, in the city that was his journey’s limit. On this occa- 
sion—the story has been told differently, but the writer, having 
it from the lips of the missionary himself, naturally prefers the 
evidence of his own ears—an incident took place that is at least 
worth telling. The story, as related by Father Abell, is as follows: 

“I had been riding for several weeks,” said he, “and the effects 
of time and wind and weather were beginning to tell disastrously 
upon my habilaments. My pantaloons were threadbare, and my 
coat and waistcoat were things of threads and patches. I was 
really ashamed of my appearance, and while I remained in the 
town its streets saw little of me except after nightfall. One eve- 
ning, I went out for a walk, and accident brought me to the 
vicinity of what I took to be a Protestant chapel or meeting 
house. The doors were open, and many persons were passing into 
the building. Without thought of the propriety or impropriety 
of the step I was taking, I went with the rest. A small rostrum 
at the farther end of the hall was indicative of the use that was to 
be made of it on this occasion. I managed to get a seat near the 
door, and there comparatively unnoticed, I waited for developments. 
By and bye, a hymn was given out and sung with a will, the 
greater part of the audience, which was quite orderly, taking part 
in the performance. 

“After a prayer had been offered up, about which I shall say 
nothing, a dapper little fellow mounted the stand and announced 
the subject of the discourse that followed. He was going to prove 
to his hearers that the Roman Catholic Church is a system of 


298 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


idolatrous worship, and that the Pope of Rome is the veritable 
‘Man of Sin’ referred to in the Bible. I was interested. I had 
never before had so favorable an opportunity of learning the esti- 
mate that was placed upon my religion by its enemies. The 
preacher, for such he turned out to be, was as ignorant as dirt. 
and insufferably conceited. As he proceeded, you may be sure 
that I was more astonished than confounded. His whole discourse 
was made up of misstatement and travesty of Catholic doctrine, 
and of denunciation of Catholics, and especially of the Pope. 
The poor man, it is to be hoped, was guiltless of intentional lying; 
his ignorance was beyond conception, and possibly beyond remedy. 

“His harangue coming to an end at last, I anticipated the 
motion of the audience in the direction of the door by rising to 
my feet and begging their attention for a moment. ‘Ladies and 
gentlemen, said I, ‘there is no trait of the American character more 
conspicuous than its love for fairness. You have heard to-night a 
most violent attack on the religion that is professed by two-thirds 
of the christian world. You behold in me a minister of that relig- 
ion, and an American born citizen. If I may speak here to- 
morrow night, or if you will provide me with a hall in which to 
speak, I think I can promise to prove to you that the religion I 
profess is not idolatrous, and that neither is it unreasonable.’ 
Retaining my place until the greater part of the audience had left 
the hall, I soon found myself surrounded by a knot of young 
men, each of whom appeared to be anxious that I should carry out 
the announcement I had made. It was at once arranged that, on 
the following evening, I should occupy the stand from which the 
attack had been made.’ ® 

Father Abell then goes on to tell how the report of 
the lecture brought such a crowd that it was difficult for 
him to reach the platform from which he was to speak. 
Possibly a knowledge of his oratorical powers had pre- 
ceded him. “I never felt more equal to an occasion in 
my life,” he says, “and I soon had both my subject and 
my audience well in hand.” He found it easy to de- 


molish the attacks that had been made on the Church. 


8 Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky, pp. 149-150. 


a 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 299 


In reply to the assertion that priests require “specific 
sums’ of money for their pretended forgiveness of 
“specific sins” he called attention to his faded and worn 
clothes, and asked how much the audience thought he 
had received from the thousands of penitents whose 
confessions he had heard. He assured them that, should 
he dare accept money for this holy office, he would at 
once be suspended from the exercise of his priestly 
powers. 

The lecture was not only well received; it also gave 
universal satisfaction. But it was another matter, when 
it came to interest his listeners in a religion which they 
had heard traduced from their infancy. In this Father 
Abell confesses that he failed signally. However, he 
did not go unrewarded in a temporal way; for, as quoted 
by Webb, he proceeds to say: 

“T am quite certain that I had myself no reason to be disap- 
pointed with the result of my unpremeditated incursion into the 
camp of the enemy. It gained me a number of friends, and, what 
was just about as welcome at the time, a complete suit of clothes, 
delicately presented by a committee of gentlemen duly appointed 
to carry out the will of the obliging donors, which did me 
excellent after-service.” 

Father Abell was sent to Saint Anthony’s, Breck- 
inridge County, in the fall of 1818." Everything seems 
to indicate that the journey just described took place 
not long afterwards. Father Lorigan says positively 
that he was at Nashville in 1820; and in view of Bishop 
Flaget’s account of 1819 and what has been said in the 
previous chapter, it does not seem probable that he was 
there at an earlier date. Possibly the report which 
Father Abell brought home with him combined with an 
appeal from the people to convince Bishop Flaget that 


9 [bid., p. 149. 


300 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN’ TENNESSEE 


he should now make a visit in person to that part of his 
diocese. However that be, we find him, in company 
with Father Abell, at Nashville in the spring of- 1821. 
Doctor Spalding, with Flaget’s diary before him, gives 
an account of this journey in his life of the prelate. 

Because of its interest and importance, no less than 
on the principle of gathering up the fragments before 
they are lost, and in order that the early Tennessee 
documents may be found in one convenient volume, 
we again let the narrator tell his own story. It should 
be noted, however, that there are some statements in 
the narrative which were probably not taken from 
the bishop’s diary. Of these labors Doctor Spalding 
writes: 

Tennessee was a portion of his diocese, which he had never 
as yet been able to visit. As there were few Catholics therein, 
he had delayed visiting them, until other and more pressing calls 
would be met. Father] Badin had already made four missionary 
excursions to this State.1° 

In the beginning of May, 1821, the Bishop set out on this 
journey, and proceeded by the way of Breckinridge county, in 
order to take with him the Rev. Mr. Abell, who was there sta- 
tioned. They said Mass in Litchfield on the 7th, and on the 8th 
they were in Bowling Green, where they found but five Catholics. 
They reached Nashville on the 10th, and put up with a Mr. Mont 
Brun, a Frenchman, who received them with tears in his eyes. 
On the following day, the first Mass that was ever offered up by 
a Bishop in Tennessee was celebrated by our prelate, in the house 
of his entertainer.11 The Blood of the Lamb, now mystically shed 


10 At this place Spalding has the following footnote: “This fact he 
states himself in a marginal note to Bishop Flaget’s report to the Pope in 
1836.” This must have been a copy of the report kept in the Bardstown 
diocesan archives; for Father Badin was not in Europe after 1828, or 
1829. All of Badin’s visits were made before the bishop reached Ken- 
tucky. 

11 Here we have another proof that Timothy De Montbrun retained 
the faith through all his spiritual desolation. 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 301 


on the holy altar, made a potent appeal in behalf of that infant 
mission. The total number of Catholics in Nashville and vicinity 
did not exceed sixty; and there were not, perhaps, half as many 
more in all the rest of the State. The prospects of soon establish- 
ing a congregation here were certainly not very flattering. The 
Catholics were both few and poor. Yet the Bishop was not dis- 
heartened, and he resolved to make the experiment. 

What was his joy, when he found that his proposal was most 
favorably entertained, even by the first Protestant citizens of the 
place! A liberal subscription was taken up, signed by Protestants 
as well as by Catholics. <A lot for a church, 70 by 100 feet, was 
offered by a Mr. Foster, grand master of the Masons.!2 The Prot- 
estants of the city vied with one another in showing every polite 
attention to the Bishop and his companion. The late Hon. Felix 
Grundy and his amiable wife are gratefully mentioned by the 
prelate in his Journal. He was invited to take tea with a Pres- 
byterian minister named Campbell.!® 

Many of the first families attended Mass; and a large and in- 
telligent concourse were assembled every evening at the court 
house to hear the sermons of the Rev. Mr. Abell. They listened 
with profound attention to his eloquent exposition and defence of 
the Catholic doctrine, on confession, on baptism, and on several 
other points little understood among Protestants. The notorious 
Baptist revivalist—Mr. Vardiman—was in Nashville at the time; 
and he took the alarm. He even went so far as to give notice, 
that he would hold forth in the court house on an evening, when it 
was known that Mr. Abell was engaged to preach therein. The 
stratagem did not, however, succeed; his friends prevailed on him 
not to attempt preaching, as great public indignation, already 
partially aroused by his attempt, would be likely to break upon 
his head in such a manner as to injure both himself and his sect.!* 


12 The deed to this property shows that it was sixty by one hundred feet. 
Others, possibly following him, have made the same mistake as Spalding. 
13 Felix Grundy went to Tennessee from Kentucky. He was a liberal- 
minded man, and always friendly towards Catholics. Spalding (Early 
Missions of Kentucky, p. 26) gives a pretty illustration of this trait in 
Mr. Grundy. The Presbyterian preacher referred to was the Rey. Allan D. 
Campbell (See Crayton, op. cit., p. 313, and History of Nashville, p. 476). 
14 This revivalist was the Rev. Jeremiah Vardeman of Kentucky (See 


CLAYTON, op. cit., 318). 


302 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The Rev. Mr. Abell also preached in Franklin, Tennessee, where 
there was one Irish Catholic family; and in Columbia, where he 
made a triumphant answer to a preacher, who had grossly attacked 
the Catholic Religion. A sermon he delivered in the latter place, 
on the real presence, made a great impression; and several Prot- 
estant lawyers, and others in the place, made him a present of 
money and a suit of clothes, in consideration of the very hand- 
some manner in which he had dressed the preacher, who appears 
to have been both ignorant and unpopular. On the journey, the 
Bishop served Mr. Abell’s Mass, and they mutually went to con- 
fession to each other. They departed for home on the 27th of 
May. 

Webb also notes this journey of Bishop Flaget and 
Father Abell, but says nothing about the sermon in 
the “meeting house,” or the suit of clothes.” We are 
inclined to think that this latter incident occurred as 
given by him rather than as narrated by Doctor Spald- 
ing; that is, that the missionary received it at Nashville, 
and not in the then mere village of Columbia, where 
there must have been less generosity, as well as less 
money, and fewer lawyers. Possibly, however, Father 
Abell was twice rewarded in this way for his sermons, 
as he doubtless eloquently defended the Catholic doc- 


trine in both these places. 

Be this as it may, it is certain that a number of 
Nashville’s influential non-Catholics showed themselves 
anxious to have a Catholic church in their city. It may 
be that their action was inspired in part by a wish to 


15 Life of Bishop Flaget, pp. 235-238. In a footnote Doctor Spalding 
says of the minister at Columbia: “His name was McConico;” and of the 
money given to Father Abell there: “The sum presented was two hundred 
dollars.” The minister was probably the Rev. Garner McConico men- 
tioned in the History of Nashville (page 476). We wonder if Spalding 
did not make a mistake about this money, and it were not the sum con- 
tributed at Nashville for the erection of a Catholic church in that city. 

16 Centenary of Catholicity, p. 346. 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 303 


see Nashville grow, and in part by a desire to make sure 
that the bridge was completed; but the fact is none the 
less unquestionable for that. One of those who took an 
active interest in the affair was Anthony Foster, whom 
Miss Thomas describes as “a very benevolent, hos- 
pitable, and wealthy man.” 

Foster donated to Bishop Flaget a part of lot one 
hundred and seven. ‘The plot measured sixty feet 
frontage by one hundred in length. The deed, which 
is dated October 25, 1821, tells us that the land was 
conveyed to Bishop Flaget and his successors “for and 
in consideration of the desire said Anthony has that a 
Roman Catholic church should be erected in the Town 
of Nashville where the said society may worship the 
Deity after the form of the religion which they profess, 
and in consideration of one Dollar to the said Anthony 
in hand paid by the said Benedict, the receipt whereof 
is hereby acknowledged.” On the same day, Anthony 
Foster also deeded Bishop Flaget a contiguous portion 
of the same lot, which measured forty by one hundred 
feet, the consideration being “two hundred and fifty 
dollars in hand paid.” ** Doubtless Father Abell was 
in Nashville again at this time, took advantage of his 
presence to attend to these transactions for the bishop, 
and used the money contributed by the citizens to 
pay for the second plot of ground. 

The land lay on the northern side of an elevation then 
known as Cedar Knob. Later it was called Camp- 
bell’s Hill; now it has the more dignified name of 

17 Old Days in Nashville, Tennessee, p. 25. 

18 Deed Book O, pp. 358-359, Recorder’s Office of Davidson County 

(Nashville). Both deeds were registered on November 1, 1821. They 


show that it was Anthony Foster, and not Robert Foster, as one some- 
times reads, who gave the property to Bishop Flaget. 


304 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Capitol Hill. Possibly a small frame church had been 
erected on the part donated by Anthony Foster, even 
before Bishop Flaget’s visit. A very definite tradition 
among the Catholics of Nashville tells us that such a 
church first stood there. Some years ago we met sev- 
eral people who remembered the little building well, 
although it was not used for divine services in their time, 
it having been then superseded by a brick structure. 
As late as 1924, Mr. William H. Hyronemus and Mrs. 
Columba Leonard said that both these houses of prayer 
formed a part of their early childhood recollections. 
They were the first Catholic churches in the State of 
Tennessee. 

The frame church, one fancies, was run up at once 
as an earnest in order to retain the Catholic workmen 
on the bridge. ‘The brick structure, we are told, was 
built by these mechanics themselves, between their 
hours of labor for the contractors. This would explain 
why it rose so slowly; for it is said that nearly all the 
Catholic employees left Nashville after the completion 
of the bridge, and that this church was not completed 
until about 1830.” Those who remained, no doubt, 
aided the few faithful already resident in the city and 
vicinity to bring it to completion. Perhaps the number 
of these latter at the time, while certainly small, was 
greater than that given by Webb, or discovered by 
Bishop Flaget. 

Certainly some kind of a church had been built before 
the departure of these mechanics; for a travelling cor- 
respondent of the United States Catholic Miscellany, 
in a letter written from Kentucky, December 19, 1824, 


19 This Catholic tradition of Nashville is borne out by CLayTon, op. 
cit., pp. 205, 341, and by the History of Nashville, p. 499. 


oS 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 305 


gives an account of the disposition of the priests there, 
in which he says: “Another, in the lower parts of the 
state, embraces within his jurisdiction a vast extent of 
country, and even several times in the year visits the 
neighboring state of Tennessee, wherein a church is 
already erected at Nashville.’ Meanwhile, Father 
Abell was changed from Saint Anthony’s. Webb says 
that he went to Louisville in 1823, or 1824.2° From 
this juncture until several years later, Nashville seems 
to have been practically unattended. In the report of 
his diocese dated January 11, 1826, Bishop Flaget tells 
the prefect of the Propaganda: 

In the western part there is the Rev. Father Sutt[on?], who 
was born in Ireland, but received his entire education in our 
seminary, and all the sacred orders from me. He has charge of 
three congregations, attends a number of stations, directs the sis- 
ters of Mount Carmel Convent belonging to the community of 
Loretto, and watches over the school conducted by them. The same 
missionary will visit (visitabit) the State of Tennessee twice a 
year.71 

The Rev. Francis P. Kenrick, then a professor at 
the Bardstown seminary, touches on the same subject 
in a letter of January 30, 1826, to the Propaganda’s 
prefect, his Eminence Julius M. Cardinal de Somaglia. 
Father Kenrick’s statements do not appear precisely 
to accord with that of the bishop; and he indicates either 
that Father Abell went to Saint Joseph’s College from 
Breckinridge County, or that some other priest had 

20 Miscellany, April 13, 1825; Wess, op. cit., pp. 153, 292. We are 
inclined to think that Father Abell’s ministrations at Nashville ceased 
at the time the bridge was completed, and the Catholic mechanics began 
to move away. The Nashville Gazette of March 14, 1825, shows the bridge 
in use, and indicates that it had but lately been finished. 

21 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. VIII. This account 
is the only place in which we have run across Father Sutton’s name. 
Possibly he died in his early priesthood. 


onl 


306 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


occasionally visited Tennessee after Abell gave up the 
pastorate of Saint Anthony’s. ‘The letter tells the 
cardinal: 

The State of Tennessee, which is a part of this diocese, has 
a few Catholics scattered here and there, who are little solicitous 
concerning their souls. The priest who used to attend them three 
or four times a year is now vice president of the college, and can 
therefore go to that state but once or twice in a twelvemonth. 
The church, which is built in the City of Nashville, has never been 
consecrated, or even blessed; and it either remains closed, or it 
is used by a Protestant schoolmaster who holds his classes 
therein.” 

The History of Nashville also says that, about 1825, 
“the Catholic church building in the northern extremity 
of the town was secured for a preparatory school,” as 
a part of Cumberland College.’ However, this ar- 
rangement was only temporary; and the fact that the 
brick church was not completed until 1830 or 1831 in- 
dicates that it was the older frame structure which was 
leased for a school. In any case, the following state- 
ment in the United States Catholic Miscellany of March 
1, 1828, shows that those of the faith in Tennessee 
finally appealed to Charleston, South Carolina, for 
spiritual aid. 

A respectable Catholic gentleman of Dublin writes to a Catholic 
clergyman of this city, requesting that he would, if possible, visit 
several Catholic families resident in the State of Tennessee. This 
is impracticable. The zealous Bishop under whose jurisdiction 
Tennessee is placed will, no doubt, make every exertion to supply 
the Catholics of that State with regular or occasional visits of 
clergymen. The Diocess of Charleston suffers as well as many 
others the serious loss of a want of a sufficient supply of useful 
Priests. It is painful to reflect on the situation of those Catholics 
who seek for the bread of life, and there are but a few to break 


22 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. VIII. 
23 Page 387 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 307 


it to them. The places mentioned where the aid of a Priest is 
required are Nashville, Franklin, Winchester, and Gallatin, Ten- 
nessee. 

Not long after the appearance of this article, and 
possibly in part because of it, the first attempt was 
made to place a resident priest in Nashville. Accord- 
ingly, we read in the National Banner and Nashville 
Whig of March 28, 1828: 

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH:—On Sunday next, the 30th 
instant, the Rev. James Cosgreve will celebrate Mass in the Cath- 
olic Church, and preach from the Gospel of the day. The pro- 
fessors and musical amateurs in Nashville (ladies and gentlemen) 
have kindly consented to give their aid on the occasion. In the 
course of the Mass, several appropriate pieces of music from 
Handel, Haydyn, etc., etc., will be performed. The Church being 
yet in a very unfinished state, and from the circumstance of the 
intention of having a resident clergyman located here, in order 
to enable them to comply with such intention, the Roman Catholics 
appeal to the liberality of their fellow-citizens (already amply 
experienced in their generous contributions when building the 
Church itself) for further means to finish the interior of the 
building; and for which purpose a collection will be made. Mass 
will commence precisely at 10 A.M. 

The day did not prove propitious for the pious 
effort; so another attempt was made for the purpose. 
Thus the April 4 issue of the same paper announces: 

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. In consequence of the 
inclemency of the weather on Sunday last, the collection that 
was intended to have been made for the benefit of the Catholic 
Church was postponed till Sunday next, the 6th instant (Easter 
Sunday), when the Rev. James Cosgreve will celebrate Mass 
again, and preach. The Musicians, professors and amateurs, ladies 
and gentlemen, have again kindly volunteered their services on 
the occasion. Mass will commence at 10 o'clock A.M. 

Evidently the new pastor was a man of action, 
determined to leave no stone unturned in order to bring 
his church to completion. Doubtless also the Kaster 


308 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Sunday collection did not realize as much as he had 
expected. Now, therefore, he resorted to an old-time 
method of raising money for religious, charitable, and 
other purposes not infrequently adopted when all other 
efforts had failed—a lottery. The Banner and Whig 
of April 15, 1828, says: 

CATHOLIC CHURCH: LOTTERY NO. 2—FOR 1828 

One prize of 6,000 Dollars; three prizes of 2,000 Dollars; 
one prize of 1,750 Dollars. Besides numerous smaller prizes. 
Tickets $5.00; Halves $2.50; Quarters $1.25. Tickets in any of 
the above Lotteries can be had in the greatest variety of number, 
on application at Donovan and Stouts, New Office, Nashville. 

A careful search of the National Banner and Nash- 
ville Whig failed to reveal any account of the Easter 
Sunday services, which must have been due to the fact 
that the volume was not complete. However, the 
United States Catholic Miscellany, giving that paper 
as its authority, says, on May 17, 1828: 

It appears that the Rev. James Cosgrave officiated on Easter 
Sunday in the Catholic church of Nashville, and a splendid Musical 
Concert was given on the occasion by the Professors and Musi- 
cal Amateurs in that city. General Jackson, with several other 
distinguished characters, was among the respectable audience that 
concurred to encourage by their presence, and aid by their contri- 
butions, the opening of this church, whereof this worthy clergyman 
is now appointed, by the Right Rev. Bishop of Bardstown, resi- 
dent Pastor. The few Catholics of this city, and the others 
scattered throughout the State, may doubtless hail this event as 
auspicious to the progress of their religion, hitherto retarded 
through the scarcity of Missionaries. 

There were not many Catholic journals published in 
the country at that period; and of these only the United 
States Catholic Miscellany of Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, was near enough to Kentucky and ‘Tennessee to be 


interested in the ordinary happenings of the Church in 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 309 


those parts. So again, with few exceptions, practically 
no effort has been made to preserve the primal records 
of the early dioceses, which should be the foundation 
stones for our ecclesiastical history. ‘To these causes, 
no doubt, is to be attributed the failure to discover any 
further trace of Father James Cosgreve (or Cosgrave), 
whose labors appear to have promised much good for 
the Church in Nashville. Bishop England, in the quo- 
tation above, calls him a “worthy clergyman’, and 
speaks as if he knew him well. That he was an ener- 
getic man may be seen from the initial steps of his pas- 
torate. Possibly he brought the little brick Catholic 
church in ‘Tennessee’s capital to completion before going 
to another field of toil.” 

The Catholics now had recourse to Bishop Kenrick 
of Philadelphia in the hope that he might be able to do 
something for their spiritual distress. In an undated 
letter, but almost certainly of this period, that learned 
prelate tells Bishop Flaget: 

I take advantage of the return of Mr. B. Smith to renew assur- 
ances of my high regard and my friendship for you. I wish also 
to apprize you of the complaints and petitions of a number of your 
spiritual children scattered through the State of Tennessee. Mer- 
chants who come to Philadelphia have approached me several times, 
and begged me to interest myself in their behalf; but I have 
always told them that they should apply to you. Lately, when a 
gentleman who lives at Bolivar, Tennesssee, visited me and made 
known the sad situation in which he was placed, I promised 
him that I would write to you and waive the services of two 
clergymen who had offered themselves for this diocese, should you 
wish to send them to the aid of the Catholics in that state.?° 


24 There is a tradition in Nashville that a priest died there at an 
early date. Could it have been Father James Cosgreve? 

25 Original in Louisville Archives—photostat copy in the writer’s hands. 
There is a tradition in Nashville to the effect that Father Julius Massip 


310 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


What reply Bishop Flaget made to this communi- 
cation we do not know. Possibly, however, the circum- 
stance fired the zeal of Father William Byrne, whose 
name has appeared in connection with the Rogan 
family, and determined him to relinquish the educa- 
tional institution under his charge; for he seems to have 
been the next priest in Tennessee. Spalding tells us 
that he merely paid the state a visit; but he doubtless 
turned the journey into an apostolic tour, as he was so 
impressed with the sad condition of the Church there 
that he resolved to make it the theater of his future 
labors, and even to establish a Catholic college at Nash- 
ville. This must have been sometime in 1832, just 
after he conveyed to the Jesuit Fathers Saint Mary’s 
College which he had founded in Kentucky. Unfortu- 
nately he did not live to put his design into execution.” 

While, as is known, the old Catholic Almanac (or 
Directory), which began in 1833, is not always complete 
in its accounts, it is often the only guide we have to 
follow; and in the present instance it will likely serve 
to give one a fair idea of the scant Catholic activity in 
Tennessee from that time until Father Miles’ appoint- 
ment as its first bishop. The Almanac of 1833 has a 
of Alabama visited the city once or twice in the early days. Quite 
possibly the people had recourse to Bishop Portier also for spiritual aid, 
and he sent this missionary to them—with the permission of Bishop 
Flaget of course. Father Massip was ordained in Mobile in 1830 or 
1831. His name appears in the Catholic Almanac until 1838. As he does. 
not seem to have been assigned to any particular place, he was most likely 
one of the two priests whom the Almanac tells us Bishop Portier used 
as itinerant missionaries. Father Massip seems to have been a Frenchman, 
and he most likely returned to France in 1838. 

26 SpaLpinG, Early Missions of Kentucky, pp. 267-278. Here we have 
a good appreciation of this splendid priest. See also the writer’s An 


American Apostle, pp. 27 ff. Father Byrne died of cholera, at Saint 
Mary’s College, June 5, 1833. 


FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 311 


dash after Nashville, which means at least that no spe- 
cial priest attended the place. In the edition of 1834, 
Father James Elliot, pastor of Fairfield, Nelson 
County, and several other missions in Kentucky, is 
noted as having charge of Nashville. In 1835, Nash- 
ville is marked “vacant,” and in 1836, as “having no 
resident clergyman.” But the Almanacs for 1837 and 
1838 tell us that “Nashville [is] visited semi-annually 
by the Rev. EK. J. Durbin, dwelling at Morganfield, 
Kentucky.” ** Of this extraordinary man Mr. Webb 
writes: 

In 1824, Father Durbin was intrusted with the pastoral care 
of the entire Catholic population of western and south-western 
Kentucky, with headquarters near Morganfield, in Union County. 
His pastoral jurisdiction covered thousands of miles of territory, 
in every portion of which there were living at least isolated Cath- 
olic families, every one of whom was dependent upon him for 
spiritual aid and comfort, and to whose calls, in cases of sickness, 
prompt response was considered by him as of imperative obligation. 

This immense field, it would reasonably seem, was beyond the 
powers of any unit of human capability to cultivate properly; 
and yet the Catholics living in the tier of counties that bordered 
the northern bank of the Ohio, in the States of Illinois and Indi- 
ana, were equally with his own people dependent upon him in all 
emergencies affecting their spiritual needs. Besides all this, from 
and after the year 1832, the terms of his pastorate obliged him, 
once in the year at least, to visit Nashville, in the State of Ten- 
nessee, and to bear thither, to the few Catholic families there 
residing, the benefits of his ministry.7° 

This appreciation gives Father Elisha Durbin no 
more than his merits deserve. In all the places men- 


27 Catholic Almanac, 1833, p. 54; 1834, p. 82; 1835, p. 62; 1836, p. 81; 
B/D. 140 sr LO3R,) Peo lls. 

28 Op. cit., p. 365. This work says many beautiful things about Fathers 
Durbin and Abell. The latter died on June 28, 1873, aged eighty-two 
years. He remained on duty until the day of his death. 


312 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


tioned his name is still held in benediction. However, 
if the Catholic Almanac be correct, his regular visits 
to Nashville and central Tennessee did not commence 
until after 1832. More than likely they began late in 
1834 or early in 1835. The Catholic Telegraph of 
August 14, 1835, gives a letter written by him in Union 
County on the twenty-third of the previous month, in 
which he says: “In my former letter I mentioned my 
intention of visiting Nashville, etc. I have fulfilled my 
promise, and expect soon to resign the care of Tennes- 
see to Rev. Mr. Deparcq.”” However, Father Durbin 
retained the charge, and it was probably in order to en- 
able him to do this that he was given an assistant at this 
‘time.”” 

Apparently Bishop Chabrat selected him for the try- 
ing position; nor could a better choice have been made, 
for he was one of the most faithful and tireless mission- 
aries with whom our country has been blessed. In 
length of service he stands almost without a parallel. 
How he notified his southern flock of his intended jour- 
neys among them may be judged from the following 
announcement in the Catholic Advocate of August 6, 
1836: 

MISSIONARY VISIT 

Rev. Mr. Durbin desires us to inform the Catholics of Tennes- 
see that he will shortly visit that State. His present intention 
is to be in Nashville on the 8rd Sunday in October. He will also 
visit Gallatin and Hartsville. Catholics residing in other parts 
of the state will please meet him in Nashville, or let him know, 


as soon as possible, their places of residence, that he may call on 
them. I 


29 Catholic Almanac, 1835, p. 61. Matthew Martin of Fayetteville, Ten- 
nessee, in a letter of July 10, 1839, to the Catholic Herald, says: “Our 
Catholic brethren of this State have been visited by the Rev. Mr. Durbin 
since the spring of 1836” (Herald of August 1, 1839). 








FIRST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 313 


With the appointment of Father Durbin as pastor of 
Nashville began the dawn of a better day for the Church 
of 'Tennessee; for one can but believe that he kept before 
Bishop Chabrat the sad condition of the scattered 
Catholics, and the imperative need of a resident bishop 
that Catholicity might gain a firm hold in that fair state. 
No doubt also, for he was a man of much good judg- 
ment and considerable penetration, he foresaw the tact 
and time and labor and patience which would be re- 
quired to put the Church well on its feet there, after 
the soil had been left so long untilled. 

The zealous ambassador of Christ did all that he 
could, in the little time at his disposal, to keep the faith 
alive in the hearts of the people. From the pastorate 
of Father Cosgreve, the modest brick church was rarely, 
if ever, used by the visiting missionaries. Thus Father 
Durbin found it in a state of dilapidation. Perhaps 
he felt that it would be an injustice to his small and 
poor flock to place upon them the burden of repairing 
and keeping it in good condition. He therefore, no 
doubt wisely, followed the example of his predecessors, 
and contented himself with the larger houses of the 
Catholics for all ecclesiastical functions. But, in this 
way, the temple of prayer had almost gone to rack and 
ruin by the time of Bishop Miles’ consecration. 

Father Durbin was delighted when he heard that 
Nashville had finally been erected into an episcopal see, 
and that his friend had been appointed as its first head. 
He made a hurried visit to the city and vicinity in order 
to acquaint the Catholics with the good news, no less 
than to make whatever preparations he could for a be- 
fitting reception of their bishop. On his return home, 


314 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


he wrote to Bishop Chabrat, in his characteristic, brief, 
simple way: 

I am glad to hear of the nomination of Right Rev. Mr. Miles 
to the new See of Nashville. But I cannot consider myself re- 
leased from the place until I see him installed. I have promised 
to give $200.00 to help him to fix himself there. I hope you will 
urge others to assist liberally—both priests and the people of the 
different congregations. I hope you will know the time he will 
go either to see and arrange, or to take charge of the place, and’ 
note [?] your visit to this place at the same time. I suppose 
it will be for you to go and install him; and then it might be well 
(if it can suit other things) to visit the Purchase [on your way] 
from Nashville, and this place on your way home.?° 


30 Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province. The Purchase was one of 
Father Durbin’s missions in western Kentucky. It got its name from the 
fact that it was in the part of the “Jackson Purchase” which extended 
into Kentucky. Father Durbin’s letter was written at “St. Vincent’s,”’ 
Union County, Kentucky, November 27, 1837. 





REV ote Pee Nias BADIN REV. ROBERT A. ABELL 





REV. ECISHA J. DURBIN REV. JOHN D. MAGUIRE 


THREE MISSIONARIES IN TENNESSEE BEFORE BISHCP MiLES, AND ONE 
OF THE FIRST WHO CAME TO H!S ASSISTANCE 


oP 





CHAPTER XIV 
TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 


SucH was the status of the new diocese over which 
Bishop Miles had been appointed. He was then in his 
forty-ninth year. Few men, even if younger and ot 
more vigorous health, would have had the courage to 
face that with which he was confronted. Yet, now that 
he was consecrated, he faltered not, though all that he 
or his diocese possessed in temporal goods was a dilap- 
idated brick church, forty-five by fifty-five feet, which 
stood on the northern declivity of a barren knob, cov- 
ered with dwarf cedars, in the outskirts of Nashville. 
No doubt the clergy of Kentucky had defrayed the 
expenses of his consecration. While preparations were 
under way for his installation, he stayed with his breth- 
ren at Saint Rose’s, where, during the first week of 
October, he performed his first episcopal functions by 
conferring all the sacred orders, except that of the 
priesthood, on jhis former novice, Brother Matthew 
Anthony O’Brien, who afterwards did much strenuous 
and fruitful apostolic work up and down the lower 
Mississippi River.’ 

Meanwhile, Father Durbin, who had possibly come 
from Nashville to Bardstown for the consecration, 
hastened back to the southern city in order to make 
ready for Doctor Miles’ arrival. Father Joseph T. 

1 The Catholic Advocate, October 20, 1838; An American Apostle, pp- 


59-60, and passim. 
S15 


316 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Jarboe, the prior of Saint Rose’s Convent, seems to 
have been selected to assist Father Durbin at the 
bishop’s induction. It was a happy choice, for the three 
men were close friends. Says the Catholic Advocate 
of October 20, 1838: 

On Monday, the 8th of October, the Right Rev. Dr. Miles, 
accompanied by the Very Rev. F[ather] Jarboe, left the Church 
of St. Rose’s on his way to Nashville, his Episcopal See. The 
Rev. E. J. Durbin had preceded him a few days in order to dispose 
all things for his arrival. Bishop Miles undertakes a difficult and 
most arduous mission; but we have every reason to hope that God 
will bless his labors, and that Religion will flourish in Tennessee. 


It has been handed down to us that Saint Rose’s 
gave the bishop its best steed, and that he and Father 
Jarboe travelled from that place to Nashville on horse- 
back; and the tradition is borne out by the fact that 
they were five days in making the journey. If we may 
judge by Father Jarboe’s account, the ceremony of 
installation was simplicity itself. Perhaps, however, 
it was all the more solemn, as well as the more Christ- 
hke, for that very reason. Certainly it was no less in 
accordance with Bishop Miles’ spirit than in keeping 
with the circumstances of poverty and privation. In 
a letter written at Saint Rose’s, October 29, 1838, to 
the editor of the Catholic Advocate, Father Jarboe thus 
tells the story: 

Rev. and Dear Sir:— 

When I last addressed you, I was just setting out with Right 
Rev. Dr. Miles for his new home, Nashville, which we reached 
on the Friday night following, having spent a day in Franklin 
[the last town in Kentucky], where the Bishop preached an elo- 
quent sermon on “The Rule of Faith” to quite a respectable 
audience. 

Our zealous brother in the work of the ministry, Rev. Mr. 
Durbin, “whose praise is in all the churches,’ had been at work in 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 317 


Nashville, making preparations for the Bishop’s reception. The 
church which is a brick building, forty-five by fifty-five feet, had 
been entirely neglected for many years, and was consequently much 
out of repair. Rev. Mr. Durbin had the windows, door, and floor 
repaired, and also four rows of genteel, plain seats made, num- 
bering fifteen or sixteen in a row; a neat temporary altar, and a 
convenient pulpit. It is but a just tribute of praise to this inde- 
fatigable missionary to state that he contributed a hundred and 
twenty-five dollars of his own towards these repairs, and that he 
has been the only priest that has visited the Catholics of Nash- 
ville for many years past; so that to him they are indebted for 
all those spiritual aids by which their faith has been kept alive. 
We took lodgings provided for us at the “Washington Hotel,” 
where the Bishop was soon visited by most of the Catholics of 
the place, as also by many of the citizens of other denominations 
who seemed pleased at his coming amongst them, and expressed a 
willingness to aid him in his many necessities. Indeed, his dig- 
nified demeanor, and his modest and unassuming manners will not 
fail to gain the respect of all who become acquainted with him, 
and insure their concurrence in all his laudable undertakings. 
Although the Sunday was unfavorable, the church was tolerably 
well filled. The Bishop addressed the congregation before Mass 
in a most feeling and paternal manner, and assured them of his 
devoted attachment to those lately committed to his charge. In 
truth, he seemed almost unearthly. Putting self entirely out of 
view, he declared that he lived only for them, and that his greatest 
and only happiness, both in life and death, would be to see them 
faithful in the practice of all those Christian virtues which our 
holy religion inculcates on her members. He exhorted them to 
a frequent participation of the holy sacraments, as being the means 
established by a merciful Saviour for obtaining all necessary 
graces—pledges of that eternal life which Jesus Christ has pur- 
chased for us at the price of His blood. He expressed his utmost 
confidence in the protection of heaven, and the final success of his 
labors. He assured them that no worldly interest could ever 


2The National Banner and Nashville Whig of April 11, 1828, shows that 
the Washington Hotel stood on Main Street, at the east side of the 
Public Square. 


318 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


have induced him to accept so responsible a position, and one to 
which, in his modesty, he declared he felt himself unworthy to be 
elevated. 

After Mass, Rev. Mr. Durbin preached on “Regeneration;” 
and I must say he did his subject ample justice. His attention 
was turned particularly to this subject by a remark of one of 
the religious papers of Nashville that “he knew no more about 
Regeneration than Nicodemus when he came to Jesus by night.” 
We celebrated Mass every day till Thursday inclusive, at which 
such of the Catholics as could attended, and prepared themselves 
to approach the holy sacraments. We had no opportunity of 
taking the census of the congregation with any exactness, but 
supposed there were in Nashville as many as seventy-five or a 
hundred Catholics. | 

The Right Rev. Bishop, accompanied by Rev. Mr. Durbin, left 
Nashville on the 22nd instant, and set out on a visitation of his 
Diocese, which will take him four or five weeks. He intends to 
hunt up all his flock, and no doubt, like the good shepherd, will 
take upon his shoulders such as have gone astray, and bring them 
back to the fold. After having performed the visitation of his 
Diocese, Dr. Miles will return to Nashville, and will present, 
perhaps, the first instance the world ever beheld, since the days 
of the Apostles, of a Bishop without scrip or staff, or even whereon 
to lay his head! and who has not within his Diocese one single 
Priest! ! Well may he say: “Portio mea, Domine” [| Thou, O Lord, 
art my portion]. But I would say to him: “Fear not. God said 
to Gideon: “You cannot conquer because you have too many sol- 
diers;’ and when these were dismissed till the number was so 
small that they knew the victory came from God, they were suc- 
cessful. The work is the Lord’s and He will have the honor. 
And [so] be satisfied with the reward.” 

These things I have thought proper to communicate to you, that 
through your valuable paper they may reach his many friends, 
who are anxiously expecting an account of the prospects of his 
Diocese. 

Yours, etc., 


Je Dw parboe |se 


3 Catholic Advocate, November 10, 1838. 


TAKES? POSSESSION: OF. HIS SEE 319 


F'ather Jarboe’s words have a special value, for he 
was an observant man, possessed of good critical judg- 
ment, and not at all given to flattery. Evidently he 
remained at Nashville until the departure of the 
bishop and Father Durbin. As we learn from a sub- 
sequent issue of the same paper, which gives a digest 
of their letters on their travels, they took a southeasterly 
course from Nashville. At Murfreesborough, which 
had been the state capital from 1819 to 1826, they dis- 
covered one Catholic family of seven persons, and one 
Catholic man in the vicinity. Thence they continued 
their way, via McMinnville, over Walden’s Ridge, on 
the top of which they found an English Catholic family, 
and across the Cumberland Mountains to Athens, in 
east Tennessee. At this place and along the Charleston 
and Ohio Railroad, the missionaries were welcomed by 
over a hundred Catholic Irishmen, with whom they 
spent six days in giving them instructions and the 
sacraments. 

The ambassadors of Christ did not visit Knoxville, 
which shows that the faith had died out there, and that 
its people no longer appealed for spiritual aid; for the 
place is no more than a day’s journey by horseback from 
Athens. MRetracing their steps westward through the 
southern tier of counties, they visited Calhoun, Ross- 
ville (most likely Ross’ Landing, now Chattanooga) ,* 
Salem, Winchester, and Fayetteville. Although it is 
evident from other sources that they met a few 
Catholics in all these places, Doctor Spalding’s digest 

4 Ross’ Landing, or Chattanooga, lay on the missionaries’ route. The 


only Rossville in Tennessee that we have been able to discover is in 
Fayette County, in the western part of the state. 


320 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


mentions none, except at Fayetteville, where they found 
two in the city and some in the neighborhood.’ 
Thence the wayfarers proceeded northward. At 
Mount Pleasant they visited one Catholic family. Some 
were also found at Columbia. Their last stop was at 
Franklin, about twenty-five miles south of Nashville, 
where they halted in order to administer to a handful 
of faithful in that city and vicinity.° 
Bishop Miles and Father Durbin had ridden on 
horseback some five hundred miles by the time they 
returned to Nashville. They had preached in court- 
houses, in non-Catholic churches, and in the open air. 
Possibly it was during the few days they now remained 
in the episcopal city that they estimated its Catholic 
population at somewhat over one hundred and thirty. 
Western Tennessee had got on the map, and calls for 
spiritual help were coming in from that quarter, espec- 
ially from Memphis. The bishop and his companion 
computed that the Catholics in the state numbered per- 
haps more than three hundred, but they were scattered 
here and there throughout its length and _ breadth.’ 
Whilst the outlook was gloomy indeed, from point of 
numbers and financial, clerical, and other needs, the 
appeals for priests, no less than the kindly reception 
everywhere accorded the bishop, were hopeful signs. 
In connection with his digest of the Tennessee letters, 
Doctor Spalding, who was then the editor of the Advo- 
cate, makes a strong plea not only for a widespread 
assistance in behalf of the Diocese of Nashville, but also 
9 The Advocate of January 26, 1839, shows that Father Durbin com- 
plained to Doctor Spalding of the inexact digest which he printed of 
these travels. 


6 Catholic Advocate, December 7, 1838. 
7 Ibid. 


eb, La. LOI OLE Ly ss hbs 321 


for the Catholic papers of the country to take up its 
cause and broadcast its needs. Its bishop, he declares, 
“is not only in want of the comforts, but even, to a 
great extent, of the necessaries of life.” At the end 
he adds an extract from Father Durbin’s letter in 
which that noble missionary says: 

I do hope that the clergy in the different Diocesses will con- 
sider these things, and that some one may be spared, and be willing 
to go and labor with him [ Bishop Miles]. But it should be one 
who is sincerely devoted to the cause, willing to spend himself 
and his means in establishing, or rather fixing, the Bishop, and 
serve the people for God’s sake. I don’t mean that he may not 
expect the means of subsistence. The Catholics there are few, 
but in general generous and noble souls. I do hope that the clergy 
and laity will think a little on the state of things in the new 
diocess. The church is in debt, [and] unfinished; the roof decayed. 
The Bishop is poor and without a home. If we fold our arms, and 
say: “There are others to assist in these things,’ the work must 
remain undone. We of Kentucky especially ought to feel ourselves 
bound. We should consider those of Tennessee as part of our- 
selves. But all should reflect that it is a work of the Lord; and 
that it is to establish a chair of truth in a vast field. It is needless 
for me to say more. 

Doctor Spalding states, in the course of his obser- 
vations: “We feel a deep interest in the welfare of the 
Diocess of Nashville; and this is our only motive, as it 
is our sufficient apology, for the remarks which we have 
made.” From the same source we learn that, after a 
few days’ delay at Nashville, the bishop and Father 
Durbin visited Gallatin, whence the latter returned to 
his home; while Doctor Miles also went to Kentucky 
in order to make some sort of arrangements for his 
final settlement in Tennessee.*> On Sunday, December 

8 Ibid. Although Father Durbin is said to have visited Bishop Miles 


from time to time, his labors in Tennessee terminated with the journey 
spoken of in the text. He is said to have ridden a hundred and fifty 


22 


322 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


2, he preached in the Bardstown cathedral, where he 
doubtless made an urgent appeal for an assistant priest 
and financial aid.? In regard to the first aim he failed. 
However, he appears to have had better success in the 
matter of temporal means, for in its issue of January 
26, 1839, the editor of the Catholic Advocate writes: 

We are pleased to learn by a private letter from Nashville that 
Dr. Miles has already succeeded in raising funds almost sufficient 
to repair and refit his Cathedral Church. Several Catholic fam- 
ilies have removed to Nashville during the fall and winter. ‘There 
is every prospect of there soon being in that city quite a respec- 
table Catholic congregation. Much credit is due to the liberal 
Protestants of Nashville for their generous aid in contributing for 
the repairing of the Catholic Church in that place. We cordially 
wish Bishop Miles every success in his new field of labor. Besides 
the higher impulses of zeal, he has the sympathies and well wishes 
of many friends to cheer him on in his arduous labors. In the 
commencement of his career, he will no doubt have to sow in 
sorrow; but soon he may hope to reap in joy the golden harvest of 
the Lord. 

The zealous pastor hardly knew which way to turn, 
er where to begin. Doubtless he felt that one of the 
best things to be done, under the circumstances, was to 
remind his little flock of the penitential practices of 
the Church. Accordingly, he published regulations for 
the observance of lent in the Advocate of February 9, 
1839; for this paper was taken by some of the Cath- 
olics in Tennessee, and through them the notice would 
reach the ears of others whose whereabcuts he did not 
know. Besides that of being the first regulations of the 
kind issued in the state, the document has the added 


thousand miles on horseback in the fulfillment of his missionary duties. 
He lived to an extreme age. He was born in Madison County, Kentucky, 
February 1, 1800; was ordained on September 21, 1822; and died on March 
22, 1887, remaining active almost to the end. 

9 Advocate of December 1, 1838. 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 323 


interest of recalling the noticeable differences between 
the observances of the past and the milder law of today. 

Abstinence from flesh meat [it says] will be observed from 
Ash Wednesday to the following Saturday, both included; also 
on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of the ensuing weeks of 
Lent; and every day from Palm Sunday till Holy Saturday, both 
included. The use of flesh meat is allowed on all the Sundays of 
Lent, except Palm Sunday, without restriction as to the number of 
times. It is likewise allowed, at one meal only, on Monday, 
Tuesday, and Thursday of every week, after the first Sunday 
until Holy Week. The use of fish and flesh at the same meal is 
forbidden. The use of eggs, cheese, and butter is permitted. The 
evening collation should be moderate—and in quantity and quality 
regulated by the general practice of pious Christians, so as not to 
become a meal, instead of a collation. Persons dispensed from 
the obligation of fasting on one meal, on account of delicate health 
or hard labour, should at the other meals use only food of such 
quality as is allowed to those who are obliged to fast. 

Without a priestly companion, without means, and 
with scarcely more than three hundred of his faith 
amidst a population of several hundred thousand, and 
these scattered throughout a state nearly five hundred 
miles in length, as well as over a hundred in width, and 
with an area of forty-two thousand square miles, the 
bishop must have felt lost. He now busied himself with 
the episcopal city and the nearer missions until the 
return of good weather. Then he started on another 
visit of his diocese, travelling this time, in answer to a 
eall for the bread of life, almost to the extreme eastern 
boundary of Tennessee. The Catholic Advocate of 
June 16, 1839, gives a partial account of his journey in 
these words: 

The Right Rev. R. P. Miles, Bishop of Nashville, has just 
returned from a visitation of the eastern portion of his Diocess. 
At Athens, about one hundred and fifty miles [south]east of Nash- 
ville, he found about a hundred Irishmen engaged in grading the 


324 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


railroad. The Bishop spent three days with them, said Mass on 
Sunday in a shanty, and preached to a large congregation. On 
Monday he set out for Jonesborough, one hundred and fifty-five 
miles [north]east of Athens, where he understood several persons 
were anxious to see him. On Friday he arrived at Col. [ Matthew] 
Aiken’s, whose son and daughter were the objects of his search, 
and was received and treated in the most hospitable manner by 
this excellent family. 

He found the two young converts well disposed and acquainted 
with every point of our doctrine, having obtained their knowledge 
from books and from the instructions of an elder brother, who had 
previously entered the Church, and is now studying with the 
Jesuits, in Frederick City, Maryland. Bishop Miles remained 
with them till Sunday, baptized them, said Mass, and gave them 
their first communion, which they received in a truly edifying 
manner. The young man had never before seen a Catholic clergy- 
man, and was present at Mass for the first time; his sister had 
been at school at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown, D. C. 

The Bishop left this small family with regret, and returned 
to Athens, which place he reached on the eve of the Ascension. On 
the next day he said Mass in one of the shanties and preached. 
He continued along the line four days, making a station each day; 
and on Tuesday after Ascension started for Nashville, which 
place he reached after four days’ travel, having made a circuit 
of nearly seven hundred miles, alone and on horseback.?® 

Doctor Miles was the most grateful of men. Under 
no circumstances would he allow a favor, or even an 
expression of sympathy, to go without sincere thanks. 
On his return from the journey just recounted, he 
found awaiting him a letter from the Right Rev. An- 
thony Blanc, in which that prelate graciously offered 
‘to help him in whatever way he could. ‘The immediate 
reply to the bishop of New Orleans illustrates this 
beautiful trait of the Father of the Church in 'Tennes- 


10 The Ascension Day of 1839 fell on the ninth of May, which shows 
that the bishop reached Nashville on his return journey on the seven- 
teenth or eighteenth of May. 


TAKES’ POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 325 


see, as well as throws much light on the condition and 


needs of his diocese. 
Nashville, May 20, 1839. 
Right Rev. and dear Brother in Christ. 

I found your kind favour of the 9th April in my box on my return 
from a long and fatiguing visitation of the eastern part of my 
Diocese. I am consoled to find that some of my brethren remem- 
ber me in my lonely and destitute situation, where I am left 
entirely alone to perform all the arduous duties of this hitherto 
cruelly neglected region, and where so much aid is needed to repair 
the evils that have taken deep root among my poor, deserted, and 
scattered flock. I find Catholics in almost every part of the state, 
many of whom have for many years neglected their duties, and 
in many instances have lost their faith for the want of some 
one to stir them up to a sense of religion. And what can a 
single individual do, now on the verge of fifty, amidst this general 
desolation? 

My great poverty deprives me of the means of offering a com- 
petent salary to a clergyman; and in default of this I am doomed 
to struggle alone among the frightful difficulties of every species 
that surround me! God knows how long this unpleasant state of 
affairs is to continue. For the sake of the dear souls entrusted to 
my care, I hope it will not be long. 

You were kind enough to say in your letter that you would 
aid me, and request me to make known the manner in which you 
could do this. After thanking you most cordially for your gen- 
erous offer, I must confess that my wants are so numerous that I 
am ashamed to begin to mention them, lest I should frighten you 
by their number. Encouraged, however, by your liberality, I will 
state, in short, some of the most prominent. I need, in the first 
place, a good, zealous, active Priest to help me, and who shall 
have with me every comfort that I can procure for him. I need 
money to assist in repairing our church, vestments, chalices, etc., 
etc. -I should be particularly pleased to get one of those cloth ante- 
pendiums which I have seen sent from France. I wish also to 
get a keg of pure wine for the altar; for which I will pay you, 
if you will be kind enough to send it to me. 

In fine, I need everything. And if you can send me any thing 


326 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


above mentioned, you will confer a favour on your poor, destitute 
brother, which will not soon be forgotten. I would cheerfully pay 
you a visit, but it is growing too late in the season. Moreover, 
my services are needed among my people. Be kind enough to let 
me hear from you soon; and should it be in your power to send 
me any of the above articles, please direct them to the care of 
Connor and McAlister, Commission Merchants of this place. 
I am, Right Rev. and dear Brother, 
Very respectfully and affectionately your devoted servant 
and brother in Christ, 
T Richard Pius, 
Bishop of Nashville.1 


Matthew Martin tells us that, at the time of his 
journey in the fall of 1838, Bishop Miles “traversed 
nearly all Kast and Middle Tennessee;” that he prom- 
ised to make a similar visit in the spring of 1839; and 
that he was prevented from doing so only by want of 


assistance.” 'To Martin he wrote: 

I have no hope under God but in my own exertions and 
individual labour. Having heard during the winter that there were 
two persons near Jonesboro’ wishing to become members of our 
Church, I thought it my first duty to see them; which I have 
done, and, to my great gratification, added two fervent members to 


my little flock. The railroad near Athens was in my way, [ and} 
I also visited it. The unsettled condition of my affairs at home 
required my speedy return, and thus I have failed in executing 
a plan which I had in view when I last wrote you. In my present 
destitute condition, it will be impossible for me to visit my diocese 
more than once a year. My case is a hard one, and I hope my 
friends will have patience. I must visit Kentucky once more, and 
make a last effort to procure assistance. If I fail on this occasion, 
as on the last, I must wait till God pleases to relieve me.}% 


In Robert and Mary Aiken, the two converts men- 
tioned here and in the Advocate of June 16, 1839, we 
11 Archives of Notre Dame University. 


12 Letter to the Catholic Herald from Fayetteville, Tennessee, July 10, 
1839 (Herald of August 1, 1839). 13 [bid, 





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HOLY ROSARY CATHEDRAL 
NASHVILLE'S FIRST CATHEDRAL, FIRST BISHOP, AND FIRST 


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TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 327 


have an interesting side-light on Tennessee’s early 
Catholic history. Though born and reared where there 
were no Catholics, and brought up strict Methodists, 
they came into the Church through a special gift from 
heaven, albeit the faith had all but died out in the 
eastern part of the state. Doubtless it was a reward 
for their good lives. Their brother, Father John F. 
Aiken, S.J., was Tennessee’s first priest. He became 
a convert while a student at Georgetown College, 
entered the Society of Jesus, and through his letters 
and books of instruction which he sent home converted 
nearly all his large family, and had the unusual happi- 
ness of baptizing his own aged father and mother.“ 
Evidently the bishop’s faithful steed was worn out 
by his frequent and long journeys, for this time the 
harvester of souls travelled to Kentucky in the stage- 
coach. While there he gave the minor orders and 
subdeaconship to Brother Augustine Peter Anderson, 
O.P., and conferred the priesthood upon Brother Mat- 
thew A. O’Brien.” But he failed to secure help for 
14 Catalogues of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus from 
1838 to 1862; Baptismal Register of Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown; 
PARKE, Some Notes on the Rise and Spread of the Catholic Missions in 
Virgima, p. 21. The Aikens were a noted family of Pulaski County, 
Virginia. Col. Matthew Aiken married Miss Blanche Brown, possibly 
in his native place, with whom he settled in Washington County, Ten- 
nessee. Father Aiken, their eldest son, was born there, August 11, 1814; 
was sent to Georgetown College; was baptized a Catholic, December 30, 
1835; entered the Society of Jesus, August 25, 1837; was ordained, July 
22, 1844 (United States Catholic Magazine, III, 609—September, 1844) ; 
spent the most of his priestly life at Alexandria, Virginia, where his 
memory is still treasured; died at Georgetown, February 6, 1861. His 
letters to various members of his family (archives of Nashville and Saint 
Joseph’s Province) reveal that there was a large family, and that he left 


nothing undone to make them Catholics. 
15 Advocate of July 6, 1839; An American Apostle, pp. 60-61. 


328 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


his diocese; for the Advocate of July 6, 1838, informs 
its readers: 

Right Rev. Dr. Miles took the stage for Nashville on Tuesday 
the 25th instant, “‘solitary and alone,’ without yet having the 
consolation of a clergyman to assist him in his many and arduous 
labors. Heaven grant him courage to bear up under difficulties and 
privations so trying. It is to be hoped that some zealous clergy- 
man, who is willing “to spend and be spent” in the cause of the 
Gospel, will be induced to offer his service to labor in a field where’ 
much is to be suffered and little to be gained for this world; but 
where the faithful laborer is amassing treasures for heaven, which 
“the moth cannot consume, nor thieves break through and steal.” 


Fathers Durbin and ‘Athanasius A. Aud of the Dio- 
cese of Bardstown offered him their services, but met 
with resistance from their superior."° The Rev. Joseph 
Stokes, rector of the seminary at Cincinnati, however, 
determined that he would labor in the desolate diocese 
for a year, or until such time as Doctor Miles could pro- 
cure other help; for he felt that the poor bishop would 
not be able to bear up much longer under the strain of 
his labors and the stress of his anxiety. It was a provi- 
dential resolution. Indeed, the holy man had already 
fallen a victim of his zeal. When Father Stokes, on his 
way to Nashville, reached Franklin, Kentucky, he was 
met by a messenger who urged him to make the re- 
maining forty miles as speedily as possible, for Bishop 
Miles was dangerously ill.” 

The anxious priest arrived at Nashville on Saturday 
night, September 7. While the bishop was very sick, 
there seemed no cause for fear. But the next day he 

16 Matthew Martin to the Catholic Herald as in note 12; the Rev. 
Joseph Stokes to the Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., December 27, 1839 
(Louisville Archives). 


17 The Rev. Joseph Stokes to Bishop Purcell, September 15, 1839 (Cin- 
cinnati Archives). 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS'SEE 329 


grew worse, and lay between life and death for more 
than a week. On September 15, 1839, Father Stokes 
wrote to Bishop Purcell: 

On Sunday evening he became worse, and the best medical aid 
was called in. He is now attended by three of the best physicians 
in town. On Monday last he received the last Sacraments, made 
his will, and appointed me his Vicar General and administrator. 
He is still living, and we have but faint hopes of his recovery. 
The doctors will not pronounce, but are with him day and night. 
You may judge how I feel in this strange city, and yet how 
wonderful are the ways of God. The Bishop of Nashville who 
was so long deprived of the assistance of a Priest would not be 
permitted to die without receiving the holy Sacraments. My 
heart is too much affected to dwell upon the desolate [ situation] 
in which I fear it is my lot to be placed. 

[Should] it please God to call Bishop Miles away, perhaps you 
[would] have the charity to lend me one of the young Priests 
taught by myself until the Holy See disposes of Nashville. Surely 
you will not refuse me this favour. If it please God to spare the 
Bishop, and I am almost this day in despair of his recovery, it 
will not be for me to repeat my request; but I thought, in the 
making of a disposition of your Priests, you might have some re- 
gard for me and where I am stationed. I should certainly 
return to you the young Priest at any time you would appoint. 
I need not ask you and the Priests and Sisters and orphans and 
Seminarians to pray for Bishop Miles, and not to forget myself 
who requires much more than the good Bishop. I am in attend- 
ance day and night upon him. I wonder [that] I feel no fatigue.!® 


Father Stokes does not mention the character of the 
Bishop’s illness, but the tradition of Nashville and the 
Province of Saint Joseph tells us that it was pneumonia 
brought on by a cold which his constitution could not 
throw off, because weakened by exposure and excessive 
labors.” The report of his danger occasioned wide- 

18 See the preceding note. Some words are torn out of .Father Stokes 


letter; hence a part of the brackets in the quotation. 
19 This tradition is substantiated by the Advocate of November 16, 1839. 


330 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


spread uneasiness. Bishop Purcell, for instance, wrote 
to the Most Rev. Samuel Eccleston, October 5, 1839: 


We were thrown into great alarm, at the beginning of the week, 
by the news which reached us from Nashville of Dr. Miles being 
at the point of death. . . . Bishop Flaget was exceedingly afflicted 
at hearing the news yesterday, when he reached this town after 
a tedious trip down the Ohio. But during dinner the grateful 
tidings of our good brother’s convalescence were announced to us. 
May the cure be effectual, for the moment is indeed auspicious 


for the work of Grace in Tennessee.7° 


Similarly the Catholic Advocate of October 26, 1839, 
Says: 

We are happy to be able*to inform our readers that the health 
of the Right Rev. Bishop Miles is fast improving. He is now 
out of all danger, and is able to ride out in a carriage.*! This 
intelligence must prove highly gratifying to his numerous friends 
in Kentucky, who, from the accounts they had received, entertained 
serious fears that he would not recover. The prospects of the 
Diocess of Nashville are becoming daily more cheering... . 
Bishop Miles has, we think, abundant motives for hoping that God, 
in whom he has reposed all his trust, will speedily provide for his 
scattered and hitherto abandoned flock.?* 


The appeals sent abroad had finally awakened some 
sympathy for the diocese; for from the same issue of 
the Advocate and a letter of the Rev. Edward Barron 
of Philadelphia we learn that, besides Father Stokes, 
the Rev. John Dunn, editor of the Catholic Herald in 
that city, also offered his services. Doubtless he too was 


20 Baltimore Archives, Case 25, Q 10. The omitted portion of the 
quotation merely gives some of the facts contained in Father Stokes’s 
letter as in note 17. Bishop Flaget was just returning from Europe after 
an absence of more than four years. 

21 The bishop himself had no carriage; but his friends, very often 
non-Catholics, had their carriages ever at his disposal during the time 
of his convalescence. Such at least is the tradition of Nashville. 

22 The omitted portion of the quotation contains words of praise for 
the bishop and Father Stokes, the prospects of the diocese, and so on. 


ee LO as eooLON OB THIS SEE 331 


dissuaded by his superior from going to Tennessee. 
Bishop Miles, however, had come to the conclusion that 
the surest way of providing his flock with pastors was 
to start a little seminary under the direction of Father 
Stokes and himself. Possibly another factor in this de- 
termination was a letter received from the treasurer 
of the French Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 
who had heard of the bishop’s straits, and wrote to him 
that he might draw on the society immediately for the 
money which it had allotted for his diocese.** 

No sooner did the bishop regain sufficient strength to 
look after the faithful in Memphis than he despatched 
Father Stokes on the circuit which he himself had hoped 
to make the previous spring. Franklin, Columbia, 
Shelbyville, Winchester, and Fayetteville were visited. 
On his return, he wrote to the Catholic Advocate: 


I met Catholics in all these places. Amongst some the spirit of 
Catholicity is almost extinct; whilst others, notwithstanding a long 
and painful privation of a ministry, adhered with a surprising 
fidelity to the creed of their Catholic forefathers, rejoiced at 
receiving a visit from a Priest, and prepared for the holy Sacra- 
ments. ... Although afflicted, as every Priest must be, at the 
apathy but too apparent in some of our Catholic people, and for 
which, after all, in this Diocese at least, much allowance must be 
made, I have had much consolation in witnessing the tenacity with 
which, “through good and through evil report,’ some have clung 


23 Advocate, October 26, 1839; Father Barron, October 7, 1839, to the 
Rev. Paul Cullen, at Rome (Records of the U. S. Cath. Hist. Soctety of 
Philadelphia, VII, 367); Bishop Miles to Bishop Blanc, October 29, 
1839 (Archives of Notre Dame University). Father Cullen was then the 
rector of the Irish College at Rome. Afterwards he became the cardinal 
archbishop of Dublin. Father Barron later went as a missionary to the 
free colored people who left the United States for the Republic of Liberia, 
in western Africa, became vicar apostolic of North and South Guinea, 
and was consecrated titular bishop of Constantia. He returned to the 
United States, and died at Savannah, in 1853 or 1854 (See Catholic 
Encyclopedia, 1X, 217). 


332 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


to the religion of their fathers. In the solitary instances, how- 
ever, of such firmness, who can tell the evils with which they have 
been connected? 

On one occasion, I met a man more than eighty years of age, 
a great-grandfather, the head of a numerous offspring, who for 
thirty years had not been visited by a priest. He taught his 
children, when young, the mysteries of our religion—had even 
his wife baptized and instructed by a Catholic Priest (the Very 
Rev. S. T. Badin, V. G., and the first Priest ordained in the United 
States). Yet he alone of his entire family continued faithful to 
his belief, and would never unite in any sectarian worship. His 
faith, like that of Abraham, was rewarded by the Almighty; his 
fidelity was blessed, for he lived to receive the Holy Sacrament. 
I have no doubt that if Tennessee had been favoured as other 
states, by a Catholic ministry, for years gone by, not only the 
numerous family of him just alluded to, but a multitude of others, 
would now be worthy and edifying members of the Catholic 
Church.?* 

Father Stokes says that, besides administering the 
sacraments in all the places which he visited, he preached 
several times in court-houses and Presbyterian churches 
which were generously offered to him. In fact, he re- 
ceived the most courteous treatment from the repre- 
sentative non-Catholics. Thanks to Matthew Martin 
of Fayetteville, who wrote to the Advocate on the same 
matter, October 25, 1839, we learn the date of Father 
Stokes’ visit, as well as the name of the faithful octo- 
genarian. ‘The missionary reached Fayetteville on 
October 21. The edifying old man was none other than 
the former Catholic alderman of Knoxville, James 
Dardis, who had moved to Winchester. 

Martin tells us that the venerable patriarch’s heart 
overflowed with joy at the sight of the good priest, and 
that “he informed Mr. Stokes that every Sunday he 


24 Advocate of November 16, 1839. 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 333 


read the Canon of the Mass in his prayer-book, and 
that he had never entered a Protestant church, until 
Jast Sunday evening, when he went to hear Mr. Stokes 
preach.” *” This means much, when we consider the 
channels of grace denied him, and the temptations into 
which he was thrown. The same writer gives us an 
idea, in a previous letter, of the trials of the early Cath- 
olics in Tennessee, where he says: 

The feelings of a Roman Catholic residing here are not known 
or appreciated by his brethren in the East. On the Sabbath day 
he beholds his fellow-citizens of other denominations going to their 
respective places of worship. He has either to go with such, or 
stay at home; for although I have lived in this state nearly fifteen 
years, I have never yet been at Mass publicly celebrated.”® 

Meanwhile, calls for the services of a priest continued 
to come in from various places of west ‘Tennessee. 
Those who were trying to found towns in that part of 
the state, in spite of religious bias, realized the bene- 
ficial effects of a liberal consideration for Catholics 
which might induce them to settle in such places. One 
Willham Connor, a non-Catholic of Brownsville inter- 
ested in the proposed town of Ashport, on the 
Mississippi River, about midway between the northern 
and southern boundaries of the state, wrote to the 
bishop: | 

I have known for a long time that cities can not be built without 
mechanics, and that one cause of the slow growth of the Tennessee 
towns was the little encouragement given to Catholics to settle 
in them. We have had a full trial of this lately. We had a number 
of Irish Catholics at work on the Ashport Turnpike, who could 
not be induced to stay, for fear of dying without a priest. The 
principal object of this communication is to propose that you get a 
priest to come here and settle himself. I will guarantee that the 


25 Advocate of November 30, 1839. 
26 Matthew Martin’s letter to the Catholic Herald as in note 12. 


334 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEER 


Proprietors of the town of Ashport shall donate to the Roman 
Catholics an eligible lot on which to build a church of any dimen- 
sions, and give them an equal chance with all other religious de- 
nominations.” 

However, the printed advertisement for the sale of 
lots at Ashport, a copy of which Connor sent to the 
bishop, shows that the proprietors of the incipient town 
did not dare publicly to defy the strong religious prej- 
udices of the day. Whilst it announced in bold 
characters “Lots for the use of the Presbyterian, Bap- 
tist, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches will be set 
apart as Donations,” it contained not so much as a 
reference to the Catholics. Nevertheless, the Father 
of the Church in Tennessee, anxious to avail himself 
of every opportunity for the spread of religion, did not 
allow this circumstance to prevent him from taking 
favorable action. He forwarded Connor’s letter, to- 
gether with the advertisement, to the Advocate, for 
publication in the hope that it might bring Catholics 
into his diocese. Besides, he knew well the southern 
spirit of chivalry, and trusted that the presence ot 
missionaries might result in conversions among the fair- 
minded. 

Still too weak for the journey himself, Bishop Miles 
despatched Father Stokes to Jackson, Ashport, and 
Memphis on November 4, 1839. Eiverywhere he was 
received with joy by the few who belonged to the fold, 
and treated with courteous hospitality by the leading 
non-Catholics. At Ashport, where he spent a week 
in instructing the Catholics and giving them the sac- 
raments, two lots, each one hundred and five by one 
hundred feet, were deeded to the bishop, and Andrew 


27 Advocate of September 21, 1839. 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE 335 


Finn, a contractor, was appointed his agent to super- 
intend the construction of a church, fifty by thirty-five 
feet in dimensions. Stokes speaks in terms of the 
highest praise of Messrs. William Connor and R. C. 
Campbell, two of the proprietors whom he met. Unfor- 
tunately, their efforts to found a city proved abortive, 
and thus the plan for a church there came to naught.” 

Father Stokes was the first priest of the diocese, 
and possibly the first English-speaking missionary, to 
visit any of these places. For this reason, as also 
because Memphis soon played a conspicuous part no 
less in the spiritual than in the temporal welfare of the 
state, we let Father Stokes tell the story of his labors 
in that city in his own words. Besides, they show the 


spirit which he encountered all along his route. 

I arrived at Memphis [he says] on Thursday, the 14th of 
November, and was exceedingly gratified at the Joy that was man- 
ifested by the Catholics of that town on the first arrival of a Priest 
of the Diocese of Nashville.29 The Catholics, some of whom are 
amongst the most intelligent and respectable citizens of that 
flourishing town, generally conducted themselves in a most edify- 
ing manner, prepared themselves to receive the holy Sacraments, 
and in every respect exhibited the most gratifying testimony of 
love and veneration for the merciful institution of our Redeemer. 

On Sunday, the 17th, I was invited to preach in the Male 
Academy of the town, and was favored by the attendance of the 
most intelligent portion of its citizens.2° I endeavored to explain 


28 Advocate of Jaunary 4, 1840. 

29 He hurried down from Ashport to Memphis in order to keep an 
engagement, and went back to Ashport later. 

30 This was Eugene Magevney’s log school. Magevney was the first 
Catholic school-teacher in Memphis, and one of the earliest of any kind. 
The Male Academy, as it was called, stood in what is now the center of 
Court Square, today in the very heart of the business district of the city. 
Tradition, which is doubtless true, tells us that the first public mass said 
in the present Memphis was celebrated within the humble walls of this 
school. 


336 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


what the Church really taught on the various subjects of which 
our Protestant brethren entertain such erroneous notions; and 
the result was that many of them generously offered to assist their 
Catholic fellow-citizens in the purchase of a lot and the erection 
of a Catholic church in their town. Messrs. Magevney, McKeon, 
Kenna, and Langan were appointed a Committee to select a lot 
and procure subscriptions for the building; and from the known 
Catholic spirit of these gentlemen, as well as the kind and liberal 
feelings of the citizens generally, we can have no doubt that in 
Memphis a Catholic church will soon be erected that will do honor 


to themselves and the holy religion we profess.°4 


Father Stokes possessed a buoyant disposition, which 
was no doubt partly sustained by Bishop Miles’ unfail- 
ing cheerful temperament and his own previous mission- 
ary experiences in the Diocese of Charleston. He ever 
writes in the most optimistic spirit—doubtless due in 
a measure to his own as well as to the bishop’s desire to 
attract Catholics and priests to Tennessee. In the 
course of his present letter, which we feel sure was 
written to Doctor Spalding, he says that he went from 
Memphis about forty miles down the river to attend 
some Catholics in Mississippi, and returned to Nashville 
v1a Memphis and Ashport, reaching home on Monday, 
December 16. During the journey, he travelled “seven 
hundred miles, principally on horseback.” ‘The close of 
the document deserves to be put in his own words. 
Here he tells us: 


I administered the Blessed Sacrament to fifty-two persons, 
prepared some for death, and baptised a great number of children. 


31 Three of these gentlemen were Eugene Magevney, Patrick McKeon, 
and Patrick R. Kenna. The fourth always signs himself “M. Langan” in 
the documents we have seen. The Advocate of December 7, 1839, shows 
that Mrs. Henrietta Kenna, wife of P. R. Kenna, a native of Baltimore, 
and received into the Church at Cincinnati a few months before, died in 
Memphis on November 18, and was assisted by Father Stokes. Stokes’ 
letter, from which we quote here, is dated: Nashville, Tennessee, December 
19, 1839. 


TAKES POSSESSION OF HIS SEE Bos 


Could I have remained out longer, much more might be done; and 
had I a supply of books of instruction to distribute amongst 
those in whom a spirit of enquiry was excited, great good might 
be accomplished. But situated as we are, poor in every respect, 
and without clergy to aid us, we must only pray that the Father 
of the Faithful may assist us, and send us a few disinterested, 
laborious clergymen who will not seek in this world their reward, 
but be ever mindful of the solemn promise made when initiated 
amongst the clergy—Dominus pars haereditatis meae, et calicis mei 
{The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup]. 
Yours affectionately in Christ, 
Ji S  ptokes] 34 

Nashville, Tennessee, December 19th, 1839. 

In spite of sickness, poverty, and incessant labors far 
and near, the once dilapidated little cathedral that stood 
on Capitol Hill now became a temple of prayer worthy 
of the name. The bishop dedicated it to the Mother of 
God under the title of the Holy Rosary. “A Catholic”, 
writing to the Advocate, January 27, 1839, says that 
“through the generous zeal of the flock, the kind hber- 
ality of their Protestant fellow-citizens, and the untiring 
exertions of the Bishop, the building has undergone a 
thorough repair, and, decorated in a chaste and simple 
style, is now really a beautiful church.” A new organ 
had also been secured, and was used for the first time 
on Christmas Day. Doctor Miles, in his love of music 
and affectionate efforts to have the divine services as 
befitting as possible, had trained a choir of which several 
non-Catholics formed a part. The singing at both 
masses on the Feast of the Nativity was excellent. 

Bishop Blanc must have extended his helping hand; 
for the Advocate’s correspondent declares that the altar 
was exquisitely decorated, although his attention seems 

32 The Advocate makes Father Stoke’s initial “T.”—evidently an over- 
sight. 

23 


338 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


to have been principally attracted by six large candle- 
sticks sent by a Belgian lady in Brooklyn, New York. 
In the crowd that thronged the church were a number 
of non-Catholics, “among whom were noticed several 
members of the Legislature,” then in session. After 
the Gospel, at the eleven o’clock mass, continues the 
Advocate, “the Bishop ascended the pulpit; and, 
cheered and animated as he evidently was, he delivered 
an admirable discourse on the mystery of the day.” The 
joy of the little flock was beyond expression, delight 
glistened in every countenance. Christmas Day, 1839, 
the writer felt, would mark the beginning of a new era 
in the history of Catholicity in Nashville.*° 

Another source of happiness to Bishop Miles at this 
time was the acquisition of a second missionary, the 
Rev. William Clancy who came up from the Diocese 
of Mobile, where he had labored on the missions, as well 
as taught in Spring Hill College. A student at a sem- 
inary in the east had also offered his services, and the 
bishop expected to ordain him when he should go to the 
provincial council to be held at Baltimore, in May, 1840. 
All this is recounted in a letter of Father Stokes to the 
Catholic Advocate dated February 19, 1840.°* Before 
leaving Nashville, however, Doctor Miles wished to 
inspect western ‘Tennessee personally, that he might 
the better judge what arrangements he should make 
for that part of his diocese. 

Accordingly, Father Stokes tells us, he and Father 
Clancy now journeyed to Ashport and Memphis. 
Because of the condition of the roads, the inclement 

33 Advocate of January 11, 1840. 


34 Copied from the Advocate in the United States Catholic Miscellany 
of April 4, 1840. 


TABRES POSSESSIONIOFN HISISEE 339 


weather, and the state of the bishop’s health, they 
travelled by boat, although this necessitated a much 
longer route, as well as prevented the bishop from going 
to other places which he wished to visit. At both towns 
the Catholics received them with unfeigned joy, while 
the non-Catholics treated them with great courtesy. 
The bishop preached many times, and helped Father 
Clancy in the administration of the sacraments. They 
returned to Nashville a few days before Father Stokes 
wrote his letter. Possibly Father Clancy accompanied 
his superior back to the episcopal city because of the 
still weakened condition of the latter’s health, for it 
had already been determined that the missionary should 
be stationed at Memphis, with Ashport, Jackson, Boli- 
var, La Grange, and other places under his charge. 
A little seminary had also been started with two 
students, under the patronage of Saint Joseph, while 
others were expected. Preparations were likewise 
under way for starting a school for the Catholic boys in 
Nashville. Doubtless it was in part his desire to obtain 
means wherewith to carry on these good works that now 
turned Bishop Miles’ thoughts towards Europe.” But 
before we close this chapter, attention should be called 
to the fact that even optimistic Father Stokes realized 
the difficulties which had to be overcome ere the faith 
could be firmly planted in the soil of the new diocese; 


for here he remarks: 

Indeed, a more laborious mission, or one that requires more 
patient perseverance, than that of Tennessee is not to be found 
in the Union. But with a firm reliance on Providence, and our 


35 In a letter of December 27, 1839, Father Stokes tells Doctor Spalding 
that the bishop puts his main reliance on this seminary, and that he will 
make every sacrifice to maintain it (Louisville Archives). 


340 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


own humble co-operation, we have already abundant evidences 
that much good may be effected. 

The Catholic Almanac for 1840 informs us that the 
principal “stations” then in the diocese were “Gallatin, 
Hartsville, Athens, Fayetteville, Memphis, Columbia, 
Jackson, and Franklin.” From the same source we 
learn that Father Durbin volunteered occasionally to 
visit a few faithful in the northwestern part of the state. 
Father Ambrose J. Heim, stationed at New Madrid, 
Missouri, engaged to do the same for some across the 
Mississippi River from his mission.*° 

36 Father Heim was a native of France, but he was ordained in Saint 
Louis—apparently in 1837. New Madrid seems to have been his first 
mission. From there he was sent to Illinois in 1842. In 1845 he became 


Bishop Kenrick’s secretary and an assistant at the cathedral in Saint Louis, 
where he died on January 3, 1854. 


CHAPTER XV 
JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 


Bishop Miles was blessed with a no less rich fund of 
practical wisdom than of kindness and good humor. 
Nowhere have we found him accused of an unjust or 
even an uncharitable deed. His letters are almost uni- 
formly benevolent. Yet, gentle though he was, he 
could be stern and inflexible if duty demanded it. 
Falsehood and insincerity he could not brook. Every- 
where one reads that, even under the most trying 
circumstances, his spirit of cheerfulness never deserted 
him. Always prudent, rarely did he fail to act on the 
principle that what is left unsaid needs not to be re- 
tracted. .A square deal to all was a dominant trait of 
his character. He neither became exuberant in his 
praise, nor harsh or over-critical in his correction; for 
he felt that both the one and the other were harmful, 
not beneficial, in their results. His good nature, tender 
heart, and well-balanced judgment all disposed him to 
approve and encourage, rather than to censure or 
dispirit. 

Another characteristic of our shepherd of souls was 
the supreme command which he kept over his temper. 
Nevertheless, but this was only natural, he seems to 
have strongly resented the action of those men who 
were responsible for the miter being forced upon him, 
and then declined to consent that even one of their 
clergy might go to the aid of his needy diocese. It 

341 


342 THE FATHER: OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


provoked him that he should be left alone through what 
he believed to be their pious selfishness for their respec- 
tive charges. However, he did not like to express his 
sentiments in his own words. It is this delicacy of 
feeling which explains Father Stokes’ letter to the 
Rev. Martin J. Spalding, D.D., December 27, 1839: 
“The whole matter has so disedified Bishop Miles that 
he does not like for the present to trust himself on 
paper; and hence he requests me to write and say he 
will accept the young man whom you propose [for the 
seminary], and that he may come as soon as he 
pleases.” * 

Doubtless the anxiety in which his friend of the 
hierarchy was thus left had its part in determining 
Doctor Spalding, then president of Saint Joseph’s 
College, Bardstown, to give his services to the Diocese 
of Nashville, if he could make such an arrangement 
within the bounds of prudence. The proposal brought 
a prompt response. Bishop Miles’ letter reveals at 
once a keen appreciation of the generous offer, and a 
soul so noble that, greatly as it needed him, it would have 
the brilliant young priest think well before he sacrificed 
his opportunities in Kentucky for the doubtful pros- 
pects in ‘Tennessee, where the future of the Church was 


still in a state of uncertainty. 
Nashville, February 29, 1840. 
Rev. and dear Friend :— 

Your very kind and much esteemed favour of the 21st instant 
has been duly received, and has afforded me much consolation. 
The very idea that you may probably one day be among the 
clergy of my poor and heretofore cruelly neglected Diocese gives 
me a pleasure which I cannot express. Not forgetful, however, 
of the admonition you gave me, I will not permit my hopes to go 


1 Louisville Archives. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 343 


so far as to suffer from disappointment as much as I have here- 
tofore in cases of a similar nature of much less importance. As 
I expect soon to see you, I will not enter into any particulars, 
but desire you to recommend the matter seriously to Almighty God. 

As the time for the Council is approaching, I have thought it 
would be as well to defer consulting with Bishop Rosati until 
I meet him at Baltimore. And if you will be kind enough to 
accompany me as Theologian, you will not only add another to the 
very many favours I have already received at your hands, but you 
will have a better opportunity of consulting with the assembled 
Prelates on the propriety of joining the mission of Tennessee. 
I shall be much flattered if this favour can be granted. 

As I shall have business of importance to attend to before the 
Council, I shall leave home in the latter part of the next month; 
and shall, if possible, be at St. Rose for the first Sunday in 
April, immediately after which I hope to see you in Bardstown. 
I shall endeavour to reach Somerset, Ohio, for Holy Week. In 
case you could not leave home before Easter, you could perhaps 
join me at the latter place after Easter. I do not wish Dr. 
Chabrat to know anything about these matters until I see you. 
I will then give you my reason why I make this request; that is, 
if you don’t guess it before I come. 

The young man you sent me arrived safe; and, although some- 
what awkward, seems to be well disposed, and will I hope prove 
useful. Another has just arrived from Georgia. And our sem- 
inary has commenced with this small beginning. The ordoes have 
not yet reached us. We are obliged to use the Catholic Almanac 
as a substitute. Very Rev. Mr. Stokes sends you a portion of the 
good feelings with which he abounds. 

I am, Rev. and dear Friend, 
Sincerely yours in Christ. 
T Richard Pius, 
Bishop of Nashville.” 

Bishop Miles had now been out of his sick-room for 

several months; yet he was by no means well. Doubt- 


less he had already turned his mind towards Rome that 


2 Baltimore Archives, Case 35, I, 7. 


344 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


he might consult the head of the Church on the needs 
of his diocese, and obtain from the Catholics of Kurope 
wherewith to carry on the good works which he had 
begun. Some priests might also be induced to offer 
themselves for Tennessee. In this plan the zealous 
prelate but followed the example of our bishops before 
him, nearly ail of whom had recourse to this way of 
supplying their wants.° 

Possibly he had also spoken to his friends about the 
idea. At any rate, the doctors, who were uneasy about 
his health, now took up.the matter, and urged an early 
voyage across the ocean as positively necessary for 
regaining his strength. Once he should be at Baltimore, 
the journey would be fairly begun. The bishop there- 
fore determined to continue his way abroad. Much of 
the time between the date of his letter to Father 
Spalding and his departure from Nashville was no 
doubt given to preparations for this undertaking. 
Meanwhile, through the Catholic Advocate, he ad- 
dressed the following pastoral letter to the faithful of 
his diocese—perhaps the first of its kind ever seen in 
‘Tennessee. 

Richard Pius, by the Grace of God, and with the approbation of 
the Holy See, Bishop of Nashville, 

To our beloved Brethren, the Roman Catholic Laity of the Diocese 
of Nashville, Health and Benediction. 

Beloved Brethren:— 

About to undertake a voyage to Europe for the purpose of 
exposing the wants of our Diocese, and soliciting in our favour 
the generous charities of our Catholic brethren in Italy, France, 
and Germany to enable us, before we die, to form some religious 
foundations, by which you, and generations yet to come, will be 


3 Only a study of our early Church can give us a correct idea of the 
enormous debt of gratitude which we owe to the Catholics of Europe at 
that time. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 345 


preserved and instructed in Divine Truth—urged, moreover, by 
our physician not to delay our voyage, now thought indispensable 
for the perfect restoration of our health—we could not think of 
departing without making to you this our Pastoral Address. 

Called to the elevated station we so unworthily occupy, and 
deeply sensible of our utter unworthiness for so responsible, 
so dignified, an office, in vain did we remonstrate in all sincerity 
with his present Holiness, Pope Gregory XVI, and _ solicit 
permission to decline the burthen of the Episcopacy. Ac- 
quainted, however, with your spiritual privations, and fearing that 
by any further postponement we would resist the will of Heaven, 
and that through our fault souls redeemed by the Saviour’s blood 
might perish—trusting solely to the mercies of our God, who alone 
is capable of strengthening our weakness, and imparting to us 
wisdom and knowledge—we at length submitted to the will 
of the Holy Father, and were consecrated Bishop of Nashville 
in the month of September, 1838. 

Having already passed eighteen months of our Episcopacy 
amongst you, you yourselves are witnesses whether we can say 
with truth that “we are clear from the blood of all,’ mindful, as 
we trust we have been, of the charge of the Holy Apostle to the 
Ephesian Bishops: “Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock, 
over which the Holy Ghost has placed you Bishops to rule the 
Church of God” (Acts, XX, 28). It is well, beloved brethren, 
if you also can say with truth you have observed the solemn pre- 
cept that concerns you: “Obey your prelates, and be subject to 
them; for they watch as being to render an account of your souls, 
that they may do this with joy, and not with grief; for this is 
not expedient for you’ (Hebrews, XIII, 17). 

We cannot, however, conceal from our own heart that, whilst 
we have been sometimes consoled and edified, we have yet had more 
cause for grief than for joy since our elevation to the Episcopal 
dignity. Unable for an entire year to procure the assistance of 
one useful priest; having no church in which to offer with decency 
the mysteries of our holy religion; obliged to peril our own health 
by attending distant missions; and still anxious to succeed in pre- 
paring our church, and organizing our flock in our Episcopal See, 
we would have sunk under the weight of our cares and labors, were 


346 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


we not sustained by the merciful Providence of God. Our grief, 
indeed, would have been mitigated, and, midst all the trials to 
which we have been subjected, our joy would have been great, 
had we found amongst our flock all that zeal for religion, that 
devotion to its solemn duties, that anxiety to profit by the saving 
mysteries of our faith, which have distinguished the Faithful 
Christians of every age. 

You are witnesses, beloved brethren, how frequently we have 
admonished you that we “have kept back nothing that was profit- 
able to you, but have preached it to you, and taught you publicly, 
and from house to house’ (Acts, XX, 20). You will bear witness 
that, with the Holy Apostle, we have not ceased to treat “of 
justice, and chastity, and of the judgment to come” (Acts, XXIV, 
25). We call you to witness how often we have urged you to 
approach the tribunal of penance for the remission of your sins, 
that you might become worthy to partake of the blessed body and 
blood of your God and Saviour in the Most Holy Eucharist, 
remembering the awful declaration of Divine Truth: “Amen, amen, 
I say to you, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and 
drink His blood, you shall not have life in you” (St. John, VI, 
54). Can you, beloved brethren, notwithstanding this solemn 
enunciation of our Blessed Redeemer, yet flatter yourselves with 
the hope of immortal life, if you obey not His commands, or 
despise His threats and promises? 

Willing to make all allowance for a people so long left without 
a ministry, we allude not to the painful part for the purpose of 
afflicting you on the eve of our departure, but rather to urge you 
to a more serious consideration of your duty, that in our absence 
you may be mindful of our parting counsel, and no longer remain 
strangers to that peace which your holy religion so abundantly 
imparts. We desire to be able to say with St. Paul: “Out of 
much affliction and anguish of heart, | wrote to you with many 
tears, not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you might 
know the charity I have more abundantly towards you” (2 Cor., 
II, 4). 

Once again, imploring you with all affection and charity, beloved 
brethren, to begin in earnest to do penance, [we exhort you] to 
comply, as far as your condition and circumstances permit, with the 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 347 


penitential exercises of this season of Lent; to “be converted in 
all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning” 
(Joel, I1, 12), at this holy time when, “between the porch and the 
altar, the priests, the Lord’s ministers, shall weep, and shall say: 
Spare Lord, spare Thy people; and give not Thy inheritance to 
reproach” (Joel, II, 17). Now, in fine, when you are exhorted in 
the language of the Prophet “to wash yourselves; be clean 
[we beg of you]; take away your devices from my eyes; cease to 
do perversely; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the op- 
pressed; judge for the fatherless; defend the widow. And then 
come, and accuse me, sayeth the Lord: If your sins be as scarlet 
they shall be made white as snow; and if they be red as crimson, 
they shall be white as wool” (Isaias, I, 16, 17, 18). 

Can you, beloved brethren, resist those tender assurances of our 
heavenly Father, refuse to promote your own peace, and afford us 
consolation? Indeed, we hope for better things from you. You 
will not be ungrateful for the many blessings you have already 
received; and you will be “our joy and our crown.’ We have 
appointed our Vicar General, the Very Rev. Joseph Stokes, to 
minister to the spiritual wants of our beloved flock of the diocese 
of Nashville during our absence. In his zeal, piety, learning, and 
experience we have unlimited confidence, and we require of our 
clergy and people to pay to his authority the respect and obedience 
due to ourself in person. 

And now, beloved brethren, promising to be ever mindful of 
you in our prayers and sacrifices, and commending ourself to the 
pious supplications to Heaven in our favour of our brethren and 
children in Christ, “the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with 
you all. Amen.” 

Given at our Episcopal residence, Nashville, Tennessee, March 
9, 1840. 

T Richard Pius 
Bishop of Nashville.* 


This pastoral letter speaks for itself. It reveals a 
shepherd of souls pure of heart, profoundly humble, 
deeply religious, abounding in zeal and affection for his 


4 Catholic Advocate, March 21, 1840. 


348 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


flock, ever ready to sacrifice himself for their salvation. 
It presents a picture of a man of God whose life illus- 
trates the old adage which tells us that virtue avoids 
extremes, and follows the safe and sound middle course 
(In medio stat virtus). 

Possibly leaving Father Clancy in temporary charge 
at Nashville, before he should settle at Memphis, Bishop 
Miles and his vicar general started for Saint Rose’s, 
in Kentucky, where they arrived on the Sunday eve- 
ning of March 29. There they met Bishop Purcell, 
Father John McElroy, one of the best known Jesuits 
of Maryland, and Father Francis X. Evremond, S.J., 
of Saint Mary’s College, in Kentucky. It was at Saint 
Rose’s, no doubt, that the Father of the Church in Ten- 
nessee made arrangements for the mission at Nashville 
of which we shall speak later. There also, with the 
permission of Bishop Flaget, Doctor Miles raised 
Brother Augustine Anderson to the priesthood on 
April 5, 1840, and administered confirmation to the 
children of the parish.” 

The correspondent of the Telegraph, who gives us 
this information, says that Saint Rose’s Church was too 
small to admit all who came for the occasion; that there 
were many non-Catholics present; and that a main force 
which drew the crowd was the love of the people for 
Bishop Miles, who declared that he had passed the 
happiest years of his life there. How “A Visitor,” as 
the writer styles himself, was impressed may be seen 
from the second sentence of his communication, in which 
he states: “I have made several visits to many of the 
religious establishments of Kentucky, and have always 
been edified; but I do not recollect that I have at any 


9 Catholic Telegraph, May 9, 1840. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 349 


former period been more edified than on a recent visit 
to the Convent of St. Rose, occupied by the priests of 
the Order of St. Dominic.” ® 

F’'rom Saint Rose’s the bishop proceeded to Cincin- 
nati, where he gained two recruits for his diocese—the 
Revs. Michael McAleer and William O. C. Morgan. 
As the Catholic Telegraph of April 25, 1840, tells us: 

Right Rev. Dr. Miles, bishop of Nashville, left this city on‘ 
Tuesday for Somerset, Perry County. ... The bishop was ac- 
companied by the Very Rev. Mr. Stokes, Vicar General of Nash- 
ville, . . . Rev. Michael McAleer and Rev. Mr. Morgan, the 
latter of whom was ordained subdeacon on Saturday and deacon 
on Sunday last by Dr. Miles in the German Catholic Church of 
this city. The two last named gentlemen have resolved to labor 
in the new diocese, where we wish them every success.! 

From this source, then, we learn that Father Morgan, 
a convert, a very saintly man, and the first priest 
ordained for the Diocese of Nashville, as well as the 
first of its clergymen to die, received subdeaconship 
and deaconship in Holy Trinity Church, Cincinnati, 
on April 18 and 19, 1840. Most likely he was promoted 
to the priesthood by Doctor Miles, a few days later, at 
Saint Joseph’s, near Somerset, Ohio. Thence he no 
doubt went immediately to Nashville with Father 
Stokes; while the bishop continued his way, via Mount 
Saint Mary’s College, to the metropolis of Maryland. 
Doctor Spalding’s plan of joining the Nashville Dio- 
cese did not .materialize, which probably explains why 
he failed to accompany Doctor Miles to the council, 
where the Rev. Benedict Bayer, C.SS.R., of Baltimore 

6 Ibid. 

7 Telegraph, April 25, 1840. We have not been able to ascertain where 


Father Morgan made his ecclesiastical studies. Possibly he began them 
in Ireland, and completed them at Cincinnati. 


350 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


acted as theologian for the Friar Preacher prelate.® 

Prior to this time, October 10, 1839, Father Stokes 
had written a letter to the Rev. John McCaffrey, D.D., 
president of Mount Saint Mary’s College, Emmits- 
burg, Maryland, in which he says: “The Diocese of 
Nashville, as I presume you are aware, was in a most 
desolate condition until the appointment in 1838 of 
Bishop Miles, and, what is still more distressing, none 
are found willing to share his labors and privations. He 
has been alone, without a priest, almost since his con- 
secration.” ‘I'hen the document goes on to tell how 
the bishop’s delicacy of conscience forbids him “‘to hold 
out inducements to good men occupied in other places,” 
and puts in an urgent plea for two seminarians who 
have about completed their studies.” 

Similarly, on February 19, 1840, Stokes wrote to the 
Advocate that the bishop would ordain a young man 
for the diocese “when he visits Maryland” for the 
council; and on August 6, 1840, in a letter to the same 
paper, he states that the Rev. John Maguire, an alum- 
nus of Mount Saint Mary’s, was then in Tennessee. 
So is it certain that Doctor Miles stopped at that 
historic institution on his way to Baltimore, and that 
a John Maguire was one of the prefects there for the 
school year of 1839-1840. From these facts, although 
we have found no positive statement to that effect, we 
are of the opinion that the subject of our narrative 
then ordained the second priest for his diocese.*® 

8 Telegraph, May 30, and Advocate, June 6, and Miscellany, May 23, 1840. 

9 MELINE-MCSWEENEY, The Story of the Mountain, I, 405-406. 

10 We did not discover the Advocate with Stoke’s letter of February 
19, 1840; but it is copied in the Miscellany of April 4, 1840. See also 


Advocate, August 22, 1840; Mretine-McSweEEney, op. cit., I, 402; Miscel- 
lany, May 23, 1840. A correspondent of the Catholic Herald (issue of 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 351 


However this may be, the bishop reached his journey’s 
end on May 13. It was possibly Bishop England who, 
May 14, wrote to his splendid paper the news about 
the impending council. In the course of his letter, when 
telling of the arrival of Doctor Miles, he uses words 
that are significative of no little affection. 

On the afternoon [of Wednesday, May 14, he says] the zealous 
bishop of Cincinnati arrived from the College of Emmitsburg, over 
which he had formerly presided with so much advantage. With 
him came the pioneer of Tennessee, the laborious Doctor Miles, 
bishop of Nashville, considerably improved in health—and with 
as good bone and sinew and height as any of the sharpshooters 
of that state who lined the cotton bags of New Orleans.!! 

Although this was the first council attended by the 
subject of our narrative in his capacity as a member 
of the hierarchy, no digest of its labors seems called for 
here. Suffice it to say that the prelates assembled on 
Saturday, May 16, 1840, and that the council was 
formally opened the next day with a solemn high mass 
sung by Archbishop Eccleston, and an eloquent sermon 
preached by the illustrious Doctor England. All! the 
administering bishops were present, except the Right 
Rev. John Hughes of New York, who was in Kurope. 
The fathers of the council admitted to its sessions 
Bishop Charles A. de Forbin-Janson of France who 
February 13, 1845) says that Father Maguire was the first priest ordained 
by Bishop Miles, which is evidently an error. Possibly that writer meant 
to say that he was the first clergyman ordained by the prelate then living 
in his diocese. 

11 United States Catholic Miscellany, May 23, 1840. “The cotton bags 
of New Orleans” are a good-natured reference to the battle of New 
Orleans (January 8, 1815), in which General Andrew Jackson, largely 
aided by raw troups from Tennessee, defeated the English under Sir 


Edward Packenham. The British made breastworks of hogsheads of 
sugar; the Americans used cotton bales. 


352 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


was then on a visit to the United States, and drew up 
a letter of condolence and consolation to the archbishops 
of Cologne and Posen who were suffering the trials of 
persecution at the hands of Frederick William III, 
king of Prussia.” 

When the council closed, Bishops Miles, Rosati, and 
Portier were appointed a committee to take its proceed- 
ings to Rome. They were also entrusted with duplicates 
of the letter of encouragement sent by the American 
hierarchy to the German metropolitans. Sailing from 
New York on the British Queen, June 1, he and Bishops 
Portier and Rosati reached Portsmouth on the seven- 
teenth, and were in Paris by the nineteenth. Bishop 
Miles still suffered from the effects of his late illness; for 
which reason he feared to face the heat of a summer in 
Rome. After a time spent at Paris, therefore, he went 
to Belgium, where he knew Fathers John V. De Ray- 


12 Concilia Provincialia Baltimori, 159 ff; Telegraph, May 30, and 
Advocate, June 6, 1840. The prelates who took part in this council were 
the Most Rev. Samuel Eccleston of Baltimore, and the Right Revs. Bene- 
dict J. Flaget of Bardstown, John England of Charleston, Joseph Rosati 
of Saint Louis, Benedict J. Fenwick of Boston, Francis P. Kenrick of 
Philadelphia (coadjutor and administrator), John B. Purcell of Cincin- 
nati, Anthony Blanc of New Orleans, Mathias Loras of Dubuque, Richard 
P, Miles of Nashville, and Celestine de La Hailandiére of Vincennes. 
The Right Revs. Henry Conwell of Philadelphia and John Dubois of 
New York were incapacitated by age and infirmity; whilst the Right 
Revs. Frederic Rese of Detroit and John Hughes of New York (co- 
adjutor and administrator) were in Europe. The Right Rev. Guy I. 
Chabrat, coadjutor of Bardstown, was possibly detained at home by ill 
health or labor. 

A digest of the decrees of this council is given in Shea’s History of the 
Church, Il], 452 ff. Guilday’s National Pastorals gives (pp. 120 ff) its 
pastoral letter to the country. The Miscellany of June 20 and the Tele- 
graph of July 4, 1840, contain Latin and English renditions of the letter 
which the fathers of the council sent to the archbishops of Cologne and 
Posen. 


a 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 353 


maecker and Francis Adrian Van De Weyer, both of 
whom had been on the American missions.’® 

At Ghent, he enjoyed the warm hospitality of Fathers 
Pius Braeckman and Francis Ackerman, two aged 
Friars Preacher who had lately begun to reorganize 
their province after its suppression by the French Revo- 
lution and the division of United Netherlands, in 1830. 
Father Braeckman had always shown a keen interest in 
our American missions, putting himself at the disposal 
of our bishops who went to his country in search of aid. 
In the father of Catholicity in Tennessee he took a 
particular interest. From the convent in Ghent, which 
he used as the center of his activities, he traversed Bel- 
gium in every direction, and was doubtless accompanied 
by one or the other of his hosts. While there, with the 
permission of the bishop of the place, he seems to have 
held an ordination in their conventual church. Most 
likely he took with him the letters of the Baltimore coun- 
cil, getting them to the archbishop of Cologne through 
the aforesaid friends.“ 

The Friars Preacher of Holland also gave Doctor 
Miles a hearty welcome; but Fathers John D. Ranken 
of Rotterdam and Raymond Van Zeeland of Schiedam 
appear to have been especially active in his welfare. 
Here the bishop made Father Ranken’s home the chief 
base of his quest after aid.” Among the gifts received 

13 Telegraph, June 13 and September 12, 1840; Miscellany, June 13 and 
September 26, 1840; Rev. Hercules Brassac, Paris, July 7, 1840, to Bishop 
Purcell (McCann, History of Mother Setows Daughters, I, 290). 

14 A manuscript life of Fathers Braeckman and Ackerman in French— 
translated from Flemish (Archives of the Dominican Master General, 
Codex III, 42) ; Advocate, September 19, 1840; Miscellany, October 17, 1840. 

15 There are a number of letters in the Archives of the Province of 


Holland which show that the Dominicans there did all they could to help 
Bishop Miles. In this connection, it may be noted that the only aid which 


24 


354 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


in Holland was an extra-large monstrance of solid 
silver, trimmed in gold, and set with precious stones. 
The chasing is most delicate and artistic in character. 
Today, because regarded as a relic, it is used only on 
special solemnities. On its base is a Latin inscription 
which, rendered into English, reads: 

“The Year of Our Lord 1841. To the King of 
Kings, Jesus Christ, and His Apostle in the United 
States of North America, Richard Pius Miles of the 
Order of Preachers, the first Bishop of Nashville, the 
clergy and people of Uden, Holland, have made a gift 
of this ostensorium.” *° 

Although we have run across but one brief mention 
of the bishop in France after his departure from Paris 
for Belgium, it goes without saying that he spent some 
time in that country before he returned home. ‘The 
Association for the Propagation of the Faith had given 
him 26,827 frances for his diocese in 1839. "The next 
year, possibly as a result of his presence, his allowance 
was raised to 33,900; but in 1841, perhaps because of 
what he had received elsewhere, it was lowered to 24,600 
francs. Octobor 18, 1839, and January 3, 1840, he had 


the American Province of Saint Joseph received from abroad was the mite 
which their brethren in Holland and Belgium began to turn towards them 
from those countries about this time. The annals of the French and 
Austrian associations for the propagation of the faith mention rather 
generous help bestowed on all the other orders in the United States, but 
none to the Dominicans, with the exception of the modest donations made 
to Father Mazzuchelli in Wisconsin from 1844 to 1849. Perhaps one of 
the reasons for this apparent oversight was that the fathers neglected to 
write for aid. However, a tradition, borne out by a letter soon to be 
quoted, tells us that Bishop Purcell absolutely demanded that all donations 
for the missions in Ohio should be sent to him. 

16 A.D. MDCCCXLI. Regi Regum, Jesu Christo, et Apostolo ejus in 
Americae Septentrionalis provinciis foederatis, Richardo Pio Miles, Ordinis 
Praedicatorum, primo Episcopo Nashvillensi, hoc Ostensorium dono 
dederunt Clerus populusque Udenses, in Hollandia. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 355 


written to the Association, whose Annales published 
extracts from both letters.’ As these probably contain 
the gist of what he told the French people at the time of 
his visit, we give their main facts, omitting only those 
which have been recounted in documents already laid 
before the reader. 

When he went to Tennessee, the state had not had 
a resident pastor for ten years. Here he evidently refers 
to Father Cosgreve. Only a few localities were visited, 
at long intervals, by a missionary. Through this isola- 
tion and neglect, the Catholics became scattered like 
sheep without a pastor. Some of them left the state in 
order to find spiritual nourishment for their souls else- 
where. Others have grown weak in their faith, or even 
lost it. In the cases of mixed marriages, the children 
have uniformly grown up non-Catholics. In great 
stretches of the state our religion has left scarcely a 
memory. 

Then he tells how he took possession of his episcopal 
city with its dilapidated church, which is still the only 
one in the diocese; and how he found not more than one 
hundred and thirty Catholics there, only twelve of whom 
received holy communion after much preaching and 
exhortation. There are now perhaps three hundred 
faithful in Nashville. When the two priests who came 
for his induction returned to their homes, he was left 
alone in his endless missionary efforts, unable to answer 
all the calls for spiritual succor that came from widely 
separated places. After riding on horseback about nine 
hundred miles over mountains, through forests, and by 


17 Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, XII, 225; XIII, 125, 190; 
PD bVens 1. 


356 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


way of rough roads, as well as in the hottest part of the 
year, his health failed him.** 

Then he became sick, and was at the door of death 
when God sent him a priest whose zeal and piety gave 
him his first ray of hope and consolation. The popular 
prejudices against the faith are not hard to overcome. 
Wherever the Catholic doctrine is preached the people 
of other beliefs manifest an anxiety to hear it explained 
at length. Not a few have expressed a desire to have 
a Catholic church and a priest in their midst. The 
faithful along the Mississippi River are striving to erect 
churches in the hope that the bishop will soon be able 
to send them priests; but what can he do without either 
means or missionaries? All efforts have failed him in 
both regards. Having nothing himself, and taken from 
a cloister that is unable to help him, he labors under 
disadvantages which the other bishops were not obliged 
to confront. 

He had started a little seminary in his residence. For 
the maintenance of this and his priests he must trust to 
the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, which 
has already laid him under obligations which he can not 
forget. His own people are not able to defray the 
travelling expenses of their pastors. If God will but 
send him a few more good missionaries, and the Cath- 
olics of Kurope supply the means for their support, the 
bishop will be able to say: “Now, O Lord, dismiss Thy 
servant in peace.” *” 

From Bordeaux the bishop went to Vienna in 
response to an invitation to visit that city. In Austria, 

18 This shows that Bishop Miles spent the summer of 1839 in travel- 


ling from place to place through Tennessee. 
19 Annales, XIII, 125-128. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 357 


there can be no doubt, he also received donations from 
the Leopoldine Association established specially for 
the assistance of the American missions. 'Thence he 
retraced his steps to Rome, possibly reaching the 
Eternal City by the Christmas holidays in 1840; for we 
find him there early in the next year.*® In Italy he 
evidently received a letter from the provincial of the 
American Friars Preacher touching on the misguided 
Capellari-Velzi compact of 1828, by which Saint 
Joseph’s Province was directed to give the bishop of 
Cincinnati three hundred dollars a year, unless he should 
be a Dominican; but which the fathers felt certainly 
to be illegal, because based on misrepresentation and 
going beyond the authority of their General. Besides, 
it could not be observed in their state of poverty. In 
reply Miles wrote (Rome, January 16, 1841) to Father 
Charles P. Montgomery: 

I hope your letter to the Society [for the Propagation of the 
Faith] at Lyons will have the desired effect. I shall certainly do 
all in my power, though I have reason to believe that this and 
the existing difficulty with your Bishop will bring me in conflict 
with him; which I regret, as I have a great regard for him. You 
must try to conciliate his feelings, and take care that none of your 
community say or do anything that may widen the breach already 
so wide. You will never gain anything by being at war with your 
Bishop. Father Grace has prepared a memorial to present to the 
Propaganda for a rehearing of the matter between you. I feel con- 
vinced that, if the matter is rightly understood here, there will be no 
difficulty in settling it to your satisfaction. It also appears to me 
that if Bishop Purcell understood the matter correctly he would not 
make the demand.?! 

20 Catholic Advocate, February 6, 1841; Miles, Rome, February 18, 
1841, to the Right Rev. Joseph O’Finan, Ireland (Archives of Saint Jo- 
seph’s Province). The Advocate shows that he wrote to friends in Nash- 


ville from Vienna, November 1, 1840. 
21 Archives of Saint Joseph’s Priory. This letter substantiates the 


358 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Bishop Miles spent about two months at Rome. Of 
the impression he made in the capital of Christendom 
one may judge by the fact that happy tradition? of his 
sojourn still exist among the Friars Preacher of that 
city. On his return journey he most likely passed 
through France again. April 10 (Holy Saturday), 
1841, he “held an ordination in the new and splendid 
church of the Dominicans at Rotterdam.” After 
another stay in Holland and Belgium, he possibly 
passed over to England and Ireland. Be that as it 
may, it was August 26, when he reached New York on 
his way back to Tennessee.” 

Zanesville and Somerset, Ohio, and Saint Rose’s, in 
Kentucky, not only lay on his homeward route, but were 
also the places which he loved most next to his own 
diocese. Accordingly, he halted at them all. While 
at Saint Joseph’s, he administered confirmation to the 
children of that parish, Holy Trinity (in Somerset), 
and Saint Patrick’s, Junction City.** Because of these 
delays, the bishop did not reach Nashville until Sat- 
urday, October 9, 1841. The joy of the people was 
unbounded; but we can not do better than let Father 
Stokes, for the style seems to be his, tell the story. 
tradition mentioned in note 15. The matter of giving the ordinary of 
Cincinnati three hundred dollars annually, which was the cause of the 
unpleasantness referred to by Miles, dragged along for twenty years or 
more. Bishop Purcell, who had been in Rome and taken up the affair 
there shortly before Bishop Miles’ visit, acted harshly from the start. 
However, it is said that in Father N. D. Young he met his match in hard 
blows. See also Lamott’s History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, pp. 181 
ff. Father Grace, who made out the memorial in behalf of his brethren in 
1841, afterwards became the second bishop of Saint Paul. It is im- 
possible for one to study the case on its merits and not come to the con- 
clusion that justice and right were on the side of Saint Joseph’s Province. 


22 The Catholic Advocate, June 5 and September 25, 1841. 
23 Parish records; Advocate (quoting the Telegraph), October 23, 1841. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 359 


Mr. Editor :— 

Our beloved Prelate has arrived. Our Bishop, our father, and 
our friend, whose absence in Europe for more than eighteen months 
was the subject of so much regret, has by his return gladdened the 
hearts of his flock, and diffused by his presence aniversal joy. 
As soon as the day was announced on which the Bishop’s arrival 
might be expected, the Catholics of Nashville, composed of French, 
Italian, German, Irish, and American people, with one accord 
resolved to honor and greet his return by going in a body several 
miles distant from the town to meet him. Accordingly, about one 
o'clock, P.M., on Saturday last, a train of carriages, filled with 
members of our flock, and followed by a number of persons on 
horseback, proceeded from town at a rapid pace, and in excellent 
order. The flock were anxious to meet their Bishop some ten or a 
dozen miles from the town; not more, however, than three or four 
miles had been gone over, when the priests, who occupied the 
first carriage in the procession, recognized at a distance their 
Bishop travelling in a gig, accompanied by one of his clergy, a 
native of Corsica. 

The horses were immediately checked; the carriages soon un- 
occupied; those on horseback dismounted; and all, with uncovered 
heads and heartfelt joy, approached their Bishop who was soon 
amongst them, blessing with a fond affection all those who sought 
in this way to testify their love and veneration for their Prelate. 
The smiles of joy; the holiday attire; the hearty welcome, better 
expressed in manner than in words, affected the good Bishop even 
to tears, and with a truly pastoral affection he blessed his spiritual 
children. 

When the congratulations had ceased, the Bishop ascended the 
open carriage provided for him, and with him sat his Vicar General 
and the worthy Pastor of Memphis, the Rev. Mr. McAleer. The 
order of the procession was resumed; and all, in the finest spirits, 
and rejoicing at the improved health and appearance of their much 
beloved father, accompanied him to the episcopal residence, in 
Nashville. As soon as the Bishop had paid his adoration to the 
Blessed Sacrament, in his domestic chapel, he was again surrounded 
by his flock, receiving the congratulations of his affectionate chil- 
dren. The boys of our school then appeared, bearing a flag of 


360 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN, TENNESSEE 


white satin on which was inscribed, in simple but beautiful 
language, their congratulations for the happy return of their 
Bishop and Father. Indeed, so delighted was the good Prelate 
with the evidences of attachment he this day received from his 
children in Christ that he was heard to pronounce it the happiest 
day of his life. And well indeed may the Catholics of Tennessee 
rejoice at so zealous, pious, and amiable a Prelate.** 

On the following day a solemn mass of thanksgiving 
for Doctor Miles’ safe return was sung by Father 
Stokes, with Father Nicholas Savelli as deacon, and 
Father Louis Stokes as subdeacon. Before the mass, 
the bishop addressed the worshippers in a way that 
showed not only his love for them and his delight to be 
home again, but likewise the happiness afforded him by 
the brighter prospects of his diocese. In the afternoon, 
he gave benediction, and preached. On both occasions, 
there were present a number of liberal-minded non- 
Catholics, among them several members of the state 
legislature.” 

Bishop Miles had every reason to be pleased with his 
vicar general, for he proved not less faithful to the 
instructions given him than zealous in his labors. In a 
letter of date August 6, 1840, he tells the readers of the 
Advocate how, through the coming of the three priests 
mentioned earlier (Fathers Morgan, McAleer, and 
Maguire), the labors have become lighter for each, the 
fruitage greater, and the outlook more cheerful. Father 
Morgan, perhaps because of his infirm health, was 

24 Catholic Advocate, October 23, 1841. The letter to the Advocate bears 
date October 12, 1841. 

25 “Catholicus,” the Advocate’s correspondent, states this was the third 
anniversary of the Bishop’s entrance into Nashville, which is not quite 
exact; for Father J. T. Jarboe’s letters in the Advocates of October 12 


and November 10, 1838, show that the anniversary had passed by a few 
days. See the beginning of Chapter XIV. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 361 


placed in Nashville, and given charge of the little 
seminary.”° 

An object of great solicitude to our respected Bishop [the 
letter then says] has been to secure to the Diocese Priests of true 
Apostolic spirit, prepared to do all things, “to spend and be spent” 
for the sake of their Divine Master. Knowing also the character 
and intelligence of the people of Tennessee, he was most desirous 
that his missionaries should possess the necessary qualifications to 
preach with success, and to explain with satisfaction to our citizens 
the real doctrines of the Church. Two missionaries were, for this 
purpose, to be selected to travel together as a mutual support 
for each other—to be pious, exemplary, and fully competent to 
announce in a becoming manner the word of eternal life. 

Before the Bishop’s departure for Europe, he instructed his 
Vicar General to have this design carried into effect as soon as 
practical. A merciful Providence appears to favor the good Bish- 
op's zeal, and we are happy to state that, with the divine blessing, 
his, best wishes are about to be realized to their fullest extent. 
Two zealous, disinterested clergymen, properly qualified, have 
recently joined our missions, and joyfully undertaken the enviable 
office of evangelizing a great portion of our Diocese. The Rev. 
Michael McAleer and Rev. John Maguire, both alumni of St. 
Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, have been appointed, and already 
commenced their duties as travelling missionaries. 

The week previous they had preached in Gallatin and 
Hartsville, Sumner County, where the Catholics are 
good, and perhaps will soon be sufficient in number to 
support a pastor. Next week they will go to Franklin, 
and thence to Columbia. A priest, Father Clancy, ts 
stationed at Memphis. Two are at Nashville, Father 
Stokes himself and Father Morgan. 

In like manner, Father Stokes’ letter of September 
4, 1840, tells how Fathers McAleer and Maguire had 
gone to Franklin, Williamson County, on August 15, 
preached to both Catholics and non-Catholics, made a 


26 Advocate, August 22, 1840; Catholic Almanac, 1841, p. 172. 


362 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


splendid impression, and felt that a pastor might be 
stationed at that town in the near future, and find the 
means of a decent support. From Franklin they pro- 
ceeded to Columbia, Maury County. On their route 
they met a “man calling himself a Catholic who had not 
seen a priest for forty years.” In Maury County the 
missionaries also came across “‘several nominal Catholics, 
some with very numerous families; but in no instance 
did they find one family wholly or strictly Catholic. 
The unhappy parents, educated themselves in the truth 
of the Catholic faith, permit their children to unite in 
worship with their Protestant neighbors.” 

At Columbia, where they arrived on August 20, and 
in the neighborhood, the ambassadors of Christ reported 
“some of respectable standing in society, once Catholic, 
but who, from long habits of neglect, are distinguished 
from their Protestant brethren by no character or merit 
of Catholicity. ... They have unhappily forgotten 
what their holy religion taught them in early youth, and 
have in some instances added to their fault by an ungen- 
erous renunciation of their creed.” It will not be long 
before a priest may be stationed in Maury County. 
From Columbia the missionaries travelled to Shelby- 
ville, in Bedford County. 

At all these places they preached either in some non- 
Catholic church or the court-house. Everywhere it is 
the same old tale of mixed marriages, long neglect, 
eventual carelessness in matters religious, and, more fre- 
quently than otherwise, final apostasy. As is always 
the case, there is more hope for conversions among the 
non-Catholics than among those who have fallen away 


from the Church. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 363 


Father Clancy of Memphis has spent a week at 
Jackson, Madison County, where he preached nearly 
every evening in the Baptist church with good results. 
Stokes trusts that a Catholic church will soon be built 
in that “beautiful town.” 'The proprietors of the pro- 
posed new city of “Fort Pickering’, just below 
Memphis, have offered a lot for a church, and it is 
probable that one will be built there, instead of at 
Memphis, for the faithful in that part of the state.?’ 

From the same source we learn that Doctor Spalding 
spent a part of his vacation in the summer of 1840 
at Nashville. Possibly he promised the bishop this 
favor in order to appease his disappointment for not 
joining his diocese or accompanying him to Baltimore 
as his theologian at the council. However this be, the 
eloquent divine frequently electrified the people of 
Nashville by the sermons and lectures which he then 
delivered in the Holy Rosary Cathedral. In speaking 
of Doctor Spalding’s labors, Father Stokes says: “We 
sincerely pray that the good Bishop of Bardstown may 
be induced to relinquish his claim upon his services in 
favor of a Diocese which needs so much the zeal, and 
talents, and learning of men like him.” Spalding him- 
self is anxious to come to Nashville. Bishop England 
also promised Doctor Miles at the Baltimore Council 
that he would soon visit Tennessee’s capital, and give a 
course of lectures.”* 

27 Advocate of September 19, 1840. 

28 The same issue of the Advocate and a record in the book of bap- 
tisms on August 30, 1840, show that Doctor Spalding was in Nashville in 
late August and early September. It is possible that his desire for an 
active apostolate in Tennessee cost him his position as president of Saint 


Joseph’s College; for we soon find him stationed at Lexington, Kentucky. 
See his Life by J. L. Spalding, pp. 83 ff. 


364 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Meanwhile Father Morgan was taken ill, which 
necessitated F'ather Maguire’s being retained at Nash- 
ville. For this reason, Father McAleer made the next 
tour alone. Stokes’ letter on these labors is not dated, 
but it was evidently written about the middle of No- 
vember. ‘The missionary left Nashville on October 2 
for the lower counties of middle Tennessee. On Sunday 
the fourth, he said mass and preached in the house of a 
Catholic in Williamson County. ‘Taking in the parts of 
Maury County that lay on his route, he then visited 
Pulaski, Giles County, some eighty miles south of 
Nashville. 

At Fayetteville, Lincoln County, where he used the 
Cumberland Presbyterian church for preaching, he 
enjoyed the hospitality of Matthew Martin. At 
Winchester, Franklin County, the next place visited, 
the missionary preached in the Methodist church, and 
discovered several Catholics who had hitherto escaped 
notice. Returning to Pulaski, he now preached there. 
But one Catholic lived in that town, and he did not hear 
the sermon. Of the second visit to Pulaski Father 
Stokes says: 


As this was the first time that a Catholic Priest was known to 
have preached in this town, you may well imagine the great anxiety 
manifested to see and hear one. Many seemed to be of the opinion 
that some one not human was to make his appearance in the shape 
of a Catholic Priest; and to their utter surprise they at length 
discovered that, in the person of our missionary, a human being not 
very unlike many among themselves spoke, and preached, and 
reasoned, and even sustained his doctrines by appropriate texts of 
Scripture. 

Father McAleer received the greatest kindness every- 
where. His tour took a month. One priest can not 


well attend to all west Tennessee. This part of the 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 365 


state therefore will be visited next in order.” 
Unfortunately, death and departure came all too soon 
with their derangement of the plans which Bishop Miles 
had mapped out, and which his vicar general was follow- 
ing with scrupulous fidelity. Father Morgan’s health 
obliged him to take what seems to have been thought 
would be only a temporary rest. He went to Lexing- 
ton, Kentucky, where he died November 10.°° The 
death of this saintly young priest was a severe loss for 
the new and struggling diocese. Whilst not so sad, 


29 Advocate, November 21, 1840. 

30 The obituary notice in the Advocate of November 21, 1840, runs as 
follows: “Died on the morning of the 10th instant, in Lexington, Kentucky, 
of pulmonary consumption, the Rev. William O. C. Morgan, of the Ro- 
man Catholic Church. The deceased was a native of the city of Dublin, 
Ireland, had but lately received ordination, and was attached to the Dio- 
cess of Nashville. Though far removed from his relations and country, 
yet Religion provided for him in a distant land new friends and brothers, 
who sweetened the cup of his sorrows, and smoothed the pillow of death. 
She herself, as the handmaid of Heaven, came, shedding her hallowed in- 
fluence around his death-bed, assuaging every pain, softening every pang, 
and opening upon the eyes of his faith a bright and glorious vista in 
the future. 

“He bore his protracted illness here with heroic fortitude, edifying all 
who were in attendance. His faith shone out in every circumstance of 
his painful illness; and he expired with a smile upon his countenance. 
Mr. Morgan was a convert to the Catholic faith; and in becoming a 
Catholic he had incurred the displeasure of his parents, who, in conse- 
quence, dissolved all connections with him. Thus discarded at home, he 
came to this country; but before he died, he addressed a very affectionate 
letter to his mother, exhorting her, as his last request, to enquire seriously 
into the Catholic Faith. His humility was admirable. He viewed himself as 
the greatest of sinners, while he reposed an unbounded confidence in the 
tender mercies of his Saviour. He earnestly requested that nothing might 
be said in his praise after his death; and that ;it should be announced 
that he died a penitent, with an entire confidence in the merits of Christ. 
His funeral was numerously attended, and a discourse was delivered on 
the occasion by Rev. M. J. Spalding, who had kindly befriended and as- 
sisted him to the last.” 

He was buried in Lexington; and the inscription on his tombstone tells 
us that he died “in the odour of sanctity.” 


366 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


perhaps no less hurtful to the Church of Tennessee was 
the acceptance of an invitation from his kinsman, the 
former coadjutor bishop of Charleston, by the pastor 
in the western part of the state to go to the missions of 
British Guiana. December 12, 1840, Father Stokes 
writes to the Advocate: “The Rev. Mr. McAleer has 
been appointed pastor of Memphis, with the charge of 
Jackson, Bolivar, La Grange, etc., in the room of the 
Rev. William Clancy, who leaves our Diocese to join 
his cousin at Demarara, the Right Rev. Dr. Clancy.” ** 

A more joyful and fruitful event, no doubt arranged 
by Bishop Miles himself-before he left for Kurope, was 
a mission given at the Nashville cathedral from April 
25 to May 2, 1841. Fathers Francis Evremond and 
John Larkin, two Jesuit Fathers of Saint Mary’s Col- 
lege, in Kentucky, conducted it. Their earnest preach- 
ing and efforts in the confessional not only effected 
great good for religion, but were also long remembered 
in the episcopal city. The happiest relations existed 
between Saint Mary’s College and Saint Rose’s Con- 
vent. Bishop Miles and Father Evremond were especi- 

31 Advocate of December 19, 1840. The freedom with which the priests 
of the United States went from one diocese to another in the earlier 
missionary days makes it at times practically impossible to trace them 
in their various fields of labor. The Miscellany of November 22, 1828, 
shows that a Father W. J. Clancy was ordained by Bishop England at 
Charleston on the previous Sunday; while the Catholic Almanac of 1833 
places a Father W. J. Clancy in charge of Carbondale, Friendsville, and 
Silver Lake, Pennsylvania. Similarly, the Almanacs of 1839 and 1840 show 
a Father W. J. Clancy at Montgomery, Alabama, with various other 
charges. Father Stokes’ letter of February 19, 1840, to the Advocate (See 
note 34 of preceding chapter) makes it certain that the Clancy in Alabama 
came to Tennessee. As it would have involved endless time and labor 
(possibly without result), and as he labored for only a short while in 
the Diocese of Nashville, we did not attempt to ascertain whether he 


were the Clancy who was in the Diocese of Charleston, or in that of 
Philadelphia. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 367 


ally close friends. In his letter of May 10, telling of the 
communions at the close of the mission, Father Stokes 


writes: 

If any feeling of regret found admittance within our breasts, it 
was caused by the absence of our beloved Bishop on that day 
from his flock, when so many of his faithful children were ful- 
filling the anxious desires of his paternal heart. I need not say 
how frequently his beloved name was repeated on Sunday, the 
second of May. His cup of happiness would seem full, could he 
then be present with his flock. The Rev. Father Evremond, in 
his sermon, spoke of this good and common father, and the tear of 
affection glistened in the eyes of many who offered up a fervent 
prayer for his safe and speedy return.°” 

Only Father Maguire was now left as a travelling 
missionary; and he was well qualified for this work. 
Yet, as we learn from a prefatory note of Father 
Stokes to a letter of the itinerant harvester of souls, 
which was afterwards sent to the Advocate, the zealous 
priest’s exposure and labors brought on a fever which 
nearly resulted in his death.’ The Maguire document 
is so full of interest, and so important for the early 
Catholic history of Tennessee, that we close this chapter 
with a reproduction of it almost in its entirety. 

[The Rev. Joseph Stokes]. 
[ Rev. and dear Sir ] :— 

I left Nashville on the 21st of May, and proceeded to Franklin, 

where I administered the Sacraments. From Franklin I went to 


Columbia, and gave the last Sacraments to one person. I visited 
the Catholics of Shelbyville and Winchester, crossed the Cumber- 


32 Tbid., May 22, 1841. Father Stokes’ letter is dated May 10. 

33 When sending the Advocate the letter which he had received from 
Father Maguire, Father Stokes writes: “The following communication 
has been received from a zealous missionary of our Diocese, the Rev. 
John Maguire. It would have been sent to you for publication before now, 
but anxiety for the life of the missionary, whose labours and exposure 
brought on a violent fever, excluded for a time every other thought” 
(Advocate, October 2, 1841). 


368 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


land Mountains (via Jasper), and arrived on the first of June 
at Chattanooga, in East Tennessee. On the second I visited the 
men who are employed on the Western and Atlantic Railroad. 
There are one hundred Catholics on this road, with whom I have 
remained for the last six weeks. They were not visited by any 
priest for more than two years. Our beloved Bishop and the 
zealous Father Durbin visited them in the fall of 1838, when work- 
ing on the Hiwassee Railroad. Their names are held in benediction 
by these poor men. They received me with joy, and immediately 
erected a temporary church in the midst of the forest.*+ 

Many Protestants are present every Sunday to hear our doc- 
trines explained, some of whom evince a great desire to find out 
the truth. Two intelligent Protestants commenced some weeks 
ago to study and examine for themselves, and I have the happi- 
ness to inform you that their study ended in their conviction of 
the divine origin of our holy religion. A respectable farmer called 
to see me a short time ago, and asked me to explain my creed to 
him. I did so. On his departure I gave him some books to read, 
and told him to come and see me again. He returned in two 
weeks. I asked him how he liked our doctrine. “As far,” said he, 
“as I have examined, I am well pleased. I firmly believe in the 
Supremacy of St. Peter, in the Infallibility of the Church, and in 
the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Lord’s Supper.” I gave 
him some catechisms for his children. I hope ere long, I will have 
the pleasure of informing you that he and his eight children have 
been united to the true fold.*° 


The missionary then tells his vicar general that many 
of the laborers on the railroad, because of their hard- 
ships and spiritual privations, have become addicted to 
an excessive use of strong drink. Accordingly, he has 
started a total abstinence society among them. 'Twen- 
ty-five have already taken the pledge, and he believes 
that most of the others will soon follow the good 

34 Bishop Miles, it will be remembered, also visited these railroad men 
in the spring of 1839. This railroad, as also the river after which it 


was named, is now generally written “Hiawassee.” 
35 Advocate of October 2, 1841. 


JOURNEY ABROAD AND CONTINUED LABOR 369 


example. ‘The results of the move have been highly 
beneficial. It is quite probable, we may note here, that 
Bishop Miles had left instructions in this matter also. 
While not an extremist, he was always a warm advocate 
of this society, especially for those who could not other- 
wise control their appetites. So had he twice visited 
these men of toil. But to return to the letter: Father 
Maguire now says: 

I heard that there were many Catholics in Bradley, McMinn, 
Meigs, and Monroe Counties. I set out to visit them on the 
tenth of June. In Cleveland, Bradley County, many respectable 
Protestants treated me very kindly, and they invited me to preach 
four times. There are four respectable Catholic families in this 
place; one of them gave me a beautiful lot for a church; all 
promised to contribute according to their means. I found many 
families in the other counties who were glad to see me. One 
person did not see a priest for sixty-six years, another for twen- 
ty-nine years. I preached three times in Charleston, on the 
Hiwassee River. I was invited to return by some respectable Prot- 
estants, in order to explain our doctrines. 

I heard there was one family near the North Carolina line 
that had never been visited. I determined to go and see them. 
I arrived about dark at a neat farmhouse, and called for lodging. 
A venerable old man came to the door, and in a very kind and 
amiable manner invited me to put up for the night. After a 
few minutes, I told him who I was. “What!” he exclaimed, “a 
Catholic Priest! Oh, my God! I am a happy man. I knew that 
my God would not abandon me.” He embraced me with swim- 
ming eyes and a throbbing heart. He has a very interesting 
family. He has brought them up in the Catholic religion. He 
takes the Catholic Miscellany; and, by the aid of that highly re- 
spected journal, he endeavours to keep alive the flame of Catholic- 
ity among his children. 

. . . During my mission, I performed several marriages, ad- 
ministered baptism to fourteen children, and admitted to holy 
communion nearly fifty persons. I returned to the railroad on the 
tenth of July, after this arduous but consoling mission. Thus I 


25 


370 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


have given you an outline, as you requested, of my labours and 
success for the past two months, during which I have travelled on 
horseback nearly one thousand miles. 

Very respectfully in Christ, 


John Maguire. 
Chattanooga, July 11, 1841. 


CHAPTER XVI 
BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 


Bishop Miles began his apostolic circuits again as soon 
as he reached home. First, he took a rapid survey of 
the episcopal city and the nearer missions. ‘Then he 
journeyed to western Tennessee, where preparations 
were put under way for the erection of two churches; 
one of which was certainly in Memphis, the other prob- 
ably in Fort Pickering, although the failure of the 
proprietors of that town to make it a success rendered 
the bishop’s spiritual efforts there abortive.’ On his 
return to Nashville, he gave the tonsure and four minor 
orders to John O’Dowde and William Howard, and 
the tonsure to Ivo Schacht, Saturday, November 27, 
1841. On the morrow, the first Sunday of Advent, 
O’Dowde received subdeaconship; on Tuesday, No- 
vember 30, he became a deacon, and on Sunday, 
December 5, 1841, he was raised to the priesthood.’ 

These were the first ordinations ever administered in 
the state of Tennessee. The ritual was carried out with 
great solemnity on all four days. Father Stokes acted 

1 Bishop Miles secured a deed to land for a church at Memphis on 
October 29, 1841. 

2 Catholic Advocate of December 25, 1841. Father Stokes’ letter to 
that journal is dated December 9, 1841. Everywhere one sees this new 
priest’s name given O’Dowd; but in the Nashville records he signs it 
O’Dowde. We follow his way of spelling it. Father Schacht’s baptismal 
name (he afterwards became a priest) was Ivo; but he wrote the capital I 


so much like the capital J that in some early communications it appears 
as John, the Ivo evidently being taken for Jno. 


371 


372 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


as archdeacon; Fathers Hoste and Maguire were 
respectively deacon and subdeacon; Father Savelli was 
master of ceremonies. The description of the bishop’s 
pontifical robes, the cope of the archdeacon, and the 
vestments of the other ministers shows that the Journey 
abroad had been well rewarded in this regard. Many 
non-Catholics were drawn to the church by the novelty 
of the spectacle. Happiness filled the hearts of the 
faithful, especially of those who had formerly suffered 
so much from spiritual starvation. 

After the ordination of Father O’Dowde as an 
ambassador of Christ, Bishop Miles preached on the 
priesthood, and told the people that he was greatly 
rejoiced in the hope that the little seminary would help 
to supply the diocese with a sufficient number of spiri- 
tual shepherds. Father Stokes speaks in high praise of 
the eloquence, zeal, and good nature of Father Maguire, 
no less than of his success as a missionary in “Kast 
Tennessee.” * Of Bishop Miles he writes: 


It is indeed gratifying to communicate that wherever he visits 
his presence is hailed by the scattered flock, and he receives from 
others many proofs of respect and consideration. To you, how- 
ever, who know our Bishop so well it will not appear surprising 
that he should everywhere secure the esteem and regard of those 
with whom he has intercourse. He is indeed most deservedly 
popular with all classes. ... You will, I know, rejoice to hear, 
Mr. Editor, that in no part of the Union can be found a more 
happy and united body than the good Bishop and his clergy. 
Indeed, the amiable manners of Bishop Miles attach all to him. 
He is truly a father to his clergy and people; and if in other places 


3 Father William Walsh is in error, when he states (Facts, August 18, 
1894) that the Rev. John M. Jacquet was the first priest in Chattanooga. 
It seems all but certain that Bishop Miles and Father Durbin were there 
in the fall of 1838, when the place was known as Ross’ Landing; while 
there can be no doubt that Father Maguire made the city the center of 
his activities at this time. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK | 373 


the clergy enjoy advantages we do not possess, in the union and 
affection that ought to subsist between a Bishop and his Priests 
we of the Diocese of Nashville cannot be excelled. And _ this, 
you will admit, is no small compensation for whatever privations 
we are subject to. 

Two days after the ordination of Father O’Dowde, 
the bishop and Father Maguire set out for the southern 
counties, whence they seem to have passed over the 
Cumberland Mountains into the missions in the south- 
eastern part of the state to which that zealous mission- 
ary was now devoting his attention. On his return from 
this tour, Father Stokes’ next letter informs us, Doctor 
Miles prepared a course of lectures on temperance 
which he preached at the cathedral in the first part of 
the early lent of 1842. That he might set the people 
a good example, he, his clergy, and his little band of 
seminarians took the pledge in a body in the cathedral 
on Sunday, February 27. Immediately after the lec- 
tures on temperance, the bishop began another course 
of sermons in explanation of the Catholic faith, which 
he delivered Sunday after Sunday for two months or 
more, and which drew such numbers that the church 
was taxed to its utmost capacity.’ 

In the doctrinal lectures the bishop adopted the plan 
of question and answer which he had formerly followed 
with no little success in Ohio and Kentucky. Father 
Stokes tells us that these discourses attracted so much 
attention that many letters were received by mail, 
“proposing to the Bishop subjects for discussion and 
explanation.” In the same connection the vicar general 
writes: 


4 Advocate, December 25, 1841. 
2 Advocate, April 30, 1842. Stokes’ letter is dated April 19. 


374 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


We pray that God may bless this work. Much prejudice will 
at least be removed by it; but God alone can bestow the divine 
gift of faith. In Nashville, although there is, and must be, con- 
siderable prejudice against our faith, slandered as we have been, 
without a single voice having been raised in our defence, for so 
many years gone by, it gives us pleasure to state that the most 
intelligent and best informed of the citizens evince towards us the 
kindest feelings, treat our clergy with respect, and manifest a 


disposition to learn at least what we really believe.® 


Although Bishop Miles seems to have advocated 
communion at an early age, he believed that, as a rule, 
candidates for confirmation should be well instructed 
before they received that sacrament. Possibly it is for 
this reason that the earliest record which we find of his 
confirming in his own diocese is in April, 1842; and it 
was doubtless the first time that he administered the 
sacrament there, the delay being due to the difficulty 
of proper preparation.‘ Father Stokes’ letter tells of 
this event in the cathedral; after which it proceeds to 
say: 

Since the return of Dr. Miles from Europe, a church has been 
erected in East Tennessee through the active zeal of the Rev. 
John Maguire; and another in Middle Tennessee, Robertson Coun- 
ty. Two more are in progress of being erected in the [ Western? | 
District, or West Tennessee, under the superintendence of the 
pastor of Memphis, Rev. Mr. McAleer. In our own city of Nash- 
ville, on the fine and extensive lot purchased by the Bishop, we 
have already commenced the building of our Seminary, which wiil 


6 Ibid. 

7 According to the Nashville cathedral registry confirmation was ad- 
ministered on April 3 and 10; but the record was written sometime after- 
ward, for it is signed by Father Alemany who, it seems certain, had not 
yet gone to Tennessee. Stokes’ letter (Advocate of April 30, 1842) says 
it took place on April 20; but his letter is dated April 19. Besides, it 
says that the confirmation was given on Sunday, and April 20, 1842, was 
Wednesday. Possibly 20 is a typographical error for 10, and April 10, 
1842, is the correct date of the first confirmation given in Nashville. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 375 


be completed, it is hoped, by the first of September next. We shall 
then have it in our power to accommodate more Seminarians than 
at present, and receive a greater number of pupils in our school.® 

Father Stokes himself blessed and opened a church 
in Robertson County, under the patronage of Saint 
Michael, on Sunday, May 8, 1842.° It was a small 
log structure situated near Turnersville, seven miles 
south of Springfield, and some twenty-six north of 
Nashville. In regard to Saint Michael’s, Father Stokes 
writes: 

Its erection has been effected through the active zeal of a young 
man who may be called a convert to our hely religion. He was, 
like numbers in Tennessee, born of Catholic parents, but had grown 
up without a knowledge of his religion, and in the absence of a 
Catholic ministry had become indifferent, or thought equally well 
of all. Soon, however, after the arrival of the Bishop of Nashville, 
he applied for instruction, and after due time was prepared for 
the holy sacraments. The grace of God in him was not inactive; 
he soon began to impart his happiness to others; and, possessed 
of good natural talents, and thoroughly versed in the doctrines 
of the Catholic Church, he soon induced others to investigate [ the | 
divine truth. ... You perceive, Mr. Editor, how very humble 
our efforts in Tennessee are; and even in the days of primitive 
Christianity, when its sacred truths were first announced, there 
scarcely could have been more difficulties to be encountered. But 
God’s grace alone can effect what no human efforts can accomplish; 
and He desires to teach man his own inefficiency, that ‘“‘no flesh 
should glory in His sight.” 


8 We have not been able to determine where this church in eastern 
Tennessee was located, unless it was the temporary structure spoken of in 
Father Maguire’s letter of July 11, 1841, which was run up by the work- 
men on the railroad near Chattanooga—for which see note 35 of the pre- 
ceding chapter. Doubtless the second church in western Tennessee was 
the ill-fated one at Fort Pickering. The other was certainly at Memphis. 

9 The Advocate of June 4, 1842, says that this event took place on 
May 6; but this must be a typographical error for May 8, for the Sun- 
days of May, 1842, were 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29. 


376 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The Rev. John Maguire, now pastor of the Cathedral, has lately 
returned from Jonesboro’, where he visited two edifying converts, 
a young lady and her brother, who were received into the Church 
more than two years ago by the Bishop, who, when he had no priest 
to assist him, undertook this long and painful journey over the 
mountains for the purpose. Father Maguire gave us the most 
edifying account of the firmness with which they adhere to all the 
duties of religion, and their scrupulous observance of all the Church 
prescribes. ... The Rev. John O’Dowd has recently visited 
several counties in which no Catholic Missionary had ever been 
seen before. He met scattered members of the flock almost 
everywhere.1° 

Until this juncture, or thereabout, Father Stokes 
had held the three positions of vicar general, pastor of 
the cathedral, and rector of the littl seminary and 
college. Now Father Maguire becomes the cathedral’s 
rector, whilst he in turn is succeeded by Father 
O’Dowde as missionary in southern and eastern Ten- 
nessee. As a whole, despite the hardships and priva- 
tions that came from poverty, the small number of 
priests, and the scattered situation of the few Catholics, 
the outlook for the diocese loomed brighter than ever 
before. 

None of the missionaries manifested greater zeal than 
the bishop himself. None toiled harder, or took longer 
or more trying journeys, whether on horseback or by 
other early ways of travel, for the salvation of souls. 
With him it was a principle to set the example which 
he wished others to follow. His command was: 
“Come,” rather than “Go;” and it was given in action, 
rather than by word. In holiness of life all regarded 
him as a model. 

10 Advocate, June 4, 1842. The two converts at Jonesborough, it will 


be recalled, were Robert and Mary F. Aiken. Father Stokes’ letter is 
dated May 25, 1842. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 377 


The reader can not have forgotten that one of the 
first things which Doctor Miles did, after the arrival 
of Father Stokes. was to start a Catholic school for 
boys in Nashville. Although we have discovered no 
documents to that effect, there can be no doubt that 
he also sought to obtain nuns for a similar school for 
girls in the episcopal city; or that he preferred to have 
in this capacity the Dominican Sisters whom he had 
helped to establish, and upon whom he perhaps looked 
as the crowning glory of his priestly ministry. Doubt- 
less also the only obstacle which stood in the way of 
securing the services of these daughters of Saint Dom- 
iniec, either from Ohio or from Kentucky, was their lack 
of numbers at the time. On his return from Europe, 
therefore, the bishop directed his thoughts towards the 
Sisters of Charity, at Nazareth, near Bardstown, 
Kentucky, where his appeal met with a charitable re- 
sponse. ‘Touching on this topic in his letter to the 
Catholic Advocate, September 15, 1842, Father Stokes 
writes: 

The Sisters of Charity arrived in our city on Thursday, the 25th 
of last month. They were accompanied by their superior, Mr. 
[ Joseph] Hazeltine, and the Rev. J[ames] M. Lancaster, Presi- 
dent of St. Joseph’s College, Bardstown. On the Sunday following, 
28th August, a solemn high mass of thanksgiving, at which the 
Bishop assisted, was celebrated by the Vicar General, attended by 
the Rev. Messrs. [Louis] Hoste and [Joseph Sadoc] Alemany as 
deacon and subdeacon. After Mass, the Rey. Mr. Lancaster 
ascended the pulpit, and delivered a most interesting and instruc- 
tive discourse on the means of ascertaining the true religion. 
He treated the subject in a most lucid and argumentative manner, 
and claimed the attention of his numerous audience for more than 
an hour. The Protestants, who were present in great numbers, 
appeared to be deeply interested. 


378 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The day after, the 29th, the Rev. Mr. Lancaster took his 
departure for Bardstown, to be present at the commencement of his 
college exercises; but the Rev. Mr. Hazeltine remained until a 
residence was provided for the Sisters, who in the meantime were 
most kindly and affectionately entertained by a respectable lady 
of our city, a former pupil of Nazareth [Mrs. T. J. Stevenson]. 
The Sisters now occupy a large and commodious building, the 
late residence of Captain John Williams, on the brow of Camp- 
bell’s Hill, a most eligible site. They have already commenced 
their school, and with prospects of extensive usefulness. We 
thank God sincerely for His mercies to us, and we hope to prove 
ourselves by our gratitude worthy of future blessings.!4 


Father Stokes’ letters, we feel sure, present a fair 
picture of the disposition manifested by the more liberal- 
minded non-Catholics towards the Church and the 
progress that it was making in Tennessee. ‘Tradition, 
no less than this correspondence with the Advocate, 
assures us that Bishop Miles’ straightforward char- 
acter and gentlemanly ways exerted a strong influence 
in the creation of these kindly feelings. However, 
possibly because of his own fraternal and optimistic 
spirit, Father Stokes appears to have overlooked the 
deep-seated prejudices of the masses. Perhaps he had 
come into contact with few other than the well-disposed, 
and forgot that no bias is more stubborn, more bitter, 
or harder to dispel, than religious bias—especially that 
begotten of the anti-Catholic propaganda which has 
been ceaselessly carried on, throughout the English- 
speaking world. It is so today; it was infinitely worse 
three quarters of a century ago. 

11 Advocate, September 24, 1842; Sister Mary Vincent, Nazareth, De- 
cember 15, 1896, to Rev. William Walsh (Nashville Archives). See also 
History of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, pp. 19 ff., and 
McGu1, The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, pp. 114 ff.; but 


the Advocate shows these two authors to be in error when they say that 
the sisters went to Nashville in 1841. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 379 


Thus the introduction of the Sisters of Charity into 
Nashville, although a step no less calculated to advance 
the cause of education than that of religion, aroused the 
ingrained prepossessions of many almost to a frenzy. 
A Methodist paper of that city was “absolutely furious 
in the expression of its malignity.” The Catholic 
Telegraph of Cincinnati took up the unscrupulous 
sheet, and showed it no mercy in a lengthy excoriation 
of its bigotry and slander.** Bishop Miles, however, 
for there is no evidence or tradition to the contrary, 
seems to have followed his accustomed course of patient 
forbearance, without compromise, which rarely failed 
to win favor for the Church as well as for himself. 
Doubtless he delivered some doctrinal lectures or ser- 
mons at the cathedral in reply, but referred to the 
diatribe only by innuendo. This was his usual way of 
defense. Again it must have brought good results, for 
the school was soon liberally patronized by non- 
Catholics. 

Their small numbers and multiplicity of labors had 
made it impossible for the Friars Preacher to carry out 
their desire of aiding the beloved bishop of Nashville. 
But it would seem that, on the arrival of Fathers 
Francis Cubero and Joseph S. Alemany, two Spanish 
brethren, it was decided to give him their services, as 
they both wished the sort of missionary work that was 
required in Tennessee. The Telegraph of April 25, 
1840, states that they had lately arrived from Rome, 
and that they were destined for the Diocese of Nash- 
ville. It was no doubt in view of this fact that the 
report which Bishop Miles sent to the Catholic Almanac 
of 1842, after placing Father Stokes at Nashville, and 


12 Telegraph, September 17, 1842; and Pilot, April 12, 1845. 


380 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father McAleer at Memphis, with the charge of 
Jackson, Bolivar, and La Grange, says: 

Franklin, Columbia, Shelbyville, Fayetteville, and Winchester— 
attended by Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, O.P. Several counties 
in East Tennessee are attended by Rev. John Maguire and Rey. 
Francis Cubero, O.P. Missionaries for West Tennessee—Rev. 
Nicholas Savelli and Rev. Louis Hoste.12 

However, necessity demanded that Alemany and 
Cubero should be kept in Ohio. Meanwhile, in August, 
1841, the Very Rev. Eugene H. Pozzo, O.P., S.T.M., 
arrived, and was stationed at Saint Joseph’s, in that 
state. On the other hand, Father Savelli, who came 
with him, and whose namevhas already been mentioned, 
had grown tired of the Tennessee missions. Possibly, 
meeting few who could talk Italian, and knowing 
little English, he found life there too lonesome. At any 
rate, he left the Diocese of Nashville for that of Saint 
Louis about the period of Bishop Miles’ life at which 
we have now arrived.’* Probably it was in part to fill 
this loss that Father Alemany was now sent to Nash- 
ville. His last baptismal record at Zanesville, Ohio, 
is dated June 29, 1842; and his earliest at Nashville was 
performed on October 9 of the same year. He was the 
first Dominican stationed in Tennessee.” 

13 Page 147. 

14 The Catholic Almanac for 1843 shows him as assistant to Father 
Francis Cellini at Saint Michael’s, Fredericktown, Missouri. The next 
year he was pastor in the same place, and remained there until 1846, 
when he went to New Orleans. Here he was appointed pastor of the 
parish of Plaquemine, where he labored efficiently for eleven years. He 
was foully murdered on October 3, 1857, by members of an Italian secret 
society. See Catholic Telegraph, November 7, 1857. 

15 The baptismal records of Nashville at this time are so few and far 
apart that they enable us to determine the date of a new priest’s coming 
only approximately. The Catholic Herald of Philadelphia, August 12, 1841, 


says: “Two Italian missionaries, Rev. Mr. Tavelli [Savelli], for the diocess 
of Nashville, and Rev. Father Pozzo, of the Order of Preachers, for the 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 381 


The next letter on the diocese is from Robertson 
County, and is dated November 15, 1842. The sig- 
nature of “S.”, together with the unmistakable style and 
spirit of Father Stokes, leaves no doubt as to its 
authorship. Here we find a detailed account of the 
confirmation of a small class at Saint Michael’s two 
days before. Curiosity to see and hear a Catholic bishop 
brought a large crowd to the church. Before the cere- 
mony, our prelate preached on confirmation and the 
mass; afterwards he delivered a sermon on faith. 
Perhaps it was his masterful use of the Scriptures, no 
less than his splendid voice, that made those of his 
audience who could not gain entrance into the little 
log church wait around the edifice, in spite of the 
inclement weather, for he could be heard almost as 
distinctly without as within."® 

Tennessee was now to experience a far greater loss 
than that which it had suffered through the departure 
of Father Savelli. At first, Father Stokes offered his 
services to the Diocese of Nashville for only one year. 
Possibly he remained until this time because of his love 
and admiration for Bishop Miles, and his pity for the 
people in their state of spiritual destitution. Hven 
before going to Tennessee, he appears to have thought 
of entering the Society of Jesus.*. The Catholic Advo- 
cate of October 8, 1842, announces: ““We understand 
that the Very Rev. Joseph Stokes, Vicar General of 
Nashville, has resigned his office, and proceeded to the 
College of the Jesuits, in Marion County, Kentucky, 
diocess of Cincinnati, have just arrived from Leghorn in our Port. Rev. 
Mr. Tavelli [Savelli] left Rome in the middle of May.” 

16 Advocate, December 2, 1842. 


17 Father Stokes to Bishop Purcell, Septemebr 15, 1839 (Cincinnati 
Archives). 


382 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


with a view to unite himself to that distinguished order.” 

While this statement, for the reason given above, 
seems to have been erroneous in that it states that 
Father Stokes had already left the diocese, 1t was 
evidently true as regards his intention. 'The Catholic 
Almanac for 1843, doubtless because the report of the 
diocese had been sent before his resignation, still gives 
him as vicar general of Nashville; but that for 1844 
places him at Saint Mary’s College, with “S. J.” after 
his name.*® In the departure of Father Stokes, which 
no one could have regretted more than Bishop Miles 
himself, the young Diocese of Nashville lost not only 
a good priest, a zealous missionary, and a clergyman 
whose cheerful disposition must have been a source of 
joy in the hard lives of his co-laborers, but also a 
splendid publicity man. Because of his letters to the 
Advocate on the early Church there, he deserves the title 
of the first Catholic historian of Tennessee.” 


18 Almanac, 1843, p. 105; Almanac, 1844, p. 150. 

19 Father Stokes was born in Ireland, studied at Carlow, and was or- 
dained there for the Diocese of Charleston, December 21, 1822. Then he 
spent a year in the Archdiocese of Dublin, probably at Maynooth pre- 
paring to teach in Bishop England’s seminary and college. But the U. S. 
Catholic Miscellany of June 15, 1825, says: “Columbia [South Carolina]: 
The Rev. Joseph Stokes has been appointed to take charge of this and 
the neighboring congregations until some further arrangements can be 
made, and he has arrived to take charge of his flock.” This is the first 
mention of him that we have found. He remained at Columbia until 
about 1829, when he was transferred to Savannah, Georgia, of which he 
was pastor until 1835. All these ten years he was one of the most active 
missionaries of the Charleston Diocese. From Savannah he went to 
Portsmouth, Virginia; but after about a year there he became rector of 
the seminary at Cincinnati, whence he went to Nashville. In all these 
places he was regarded as a fine scholar and eloquent preacher. 

Soon finding that his vocation was not to a religious life, he left 
Saint Mary’s College, in Kentucky, and then labored for a while (1844- 
1845) at Saint Joseph’s Church, New York City. From 1845 to 1851 he 
was at Saint John’s, Utica, New York. In 1851 he became pastor at New 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 383 


A further glimpse of the zeal of the Father of the 
Church in Tennessee for the beauty of God’s temple 
and divine worship, as well as of the way in which he 
had been aided in this regard by the generosity of Cath- 
lics abroad, is afforded by a letter of a transient who 
styles himself “Philadelphian” to the Catholic Advocate 
from Nashville, December 31, 1842. First, he tells 
how, in spite of the beauty of the place and its favored 
location, his heart had been rent on a former business 
visit, some years before, at the sight of its dilapidated 
church, no less than at the thought that among such a 
splendid people “God’s best gift to man, His one and 
true religion, was scarcely known.” 'Then he proceeds 
to say: 

I return, and with joy beheld on last Christmas morning its 
sanctuary dignified by a Bishop, . ... surrounded by a youth- 
ful and efficient clergy, and its church thronged by many of the 
most intelligent and reflecting men of Nashville. All was calcu- 
lated to excite in my mind the most pleasurable feelings—contrast- 
ing the appearances and circumstances that then surrounded me 
with those, as I knew them, of other days. ... But my attention 
was soon directed to the preparations that were being made for 
the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass by the Bishop, 
who with two attendant priests, robed in vestments surpassing any- 
thing of the kind I ever saw in richness of material and chasteness 
of design, performed the solemn sacrifice with an air of most 
unfeigned piety and heartfelt devotion. 

He appeared in pretty good health. He is naturally majestic, 
his bearing bespeaking the dignity of his character. He still seems 
to have some of the vigor of manhood blending with the approaching 
majesty of age; and gives hope that he may still survive many 
London, Connecticut; in 1852, the bishop of Hartford, who then lived in 
Providence, Rhode Island, took him to that city, and made him his vicar 
general. He died on July 16, 1854, at Saratoga, where he seems to have 
gone for his health. He was a splendid priest, but seems to have had 


somewhat of a roving disposition, perhaps brought about by his long 
missionary life. 


384 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


years, cheering his little flock by his serene hilarity, strengthening 
his clergy by his evangelical example, and decorating his humble 
Cathedral by his venerable appearance. Every one with whom 
I conversed about him, Catholic or Protestant, united in the one 
general sentiment of praise. All spoke highly of him. I cannot 
describe to you the thrill of delight which almost paralyzed my 
senses, when he entoned the “Gloria in Excelsis.” His voice is 
correct, soft, mellifluous, vast in compass, and charming in effect. 


He was well responded to by the gush of a rich tide of harmony, 


bursting forth with almost magic effect from a full choir.?° 


After the mass, the Rev. John Maguire, a young man 
whom all regard as possessed of “surpassing talents,” 
preached an eloquent and learned sermon suited to the 
occasion. At vespers in the evening, the church was 
again packed to its utmost capacity alike by Catholics 
and non-Catholics. Again Father Maguire preached, 
but this time his sermon was the continuation of a series 
of lectures which he is giving on the “Rule of Faith.” 
The discourse was splendidly adapted for a mixed audi- 
ence. On neither occasion was the music “surpassed by 
any church in Philadelphia.” Another great surprise 
was the presence of the Sisters of Charity, who are 
located in one of the most beautiful and retired situ- 
ations in the city.”* 

Despite his physical appearance, Bishop Miles’ 
strength was taxed almost to the snapping point by 
labors. which were not only excessively hard, but also 
without end or intermission. For fear lest his beloved 
diocese should be left, even for a short time, without 
the guidance of a supreme pastor caused him to think 
seriously of a coadjutor. ‘To Archbishop Eccleston, 
who had notified him of the fifth provincial council to 
be held in Baltimore the next May, he wrote on Feb- 
ruary 11, 18438: 


20 Advocate, January 7, 1843. 21 [bid. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 385 


Your kind favour of the 30th January, announcing the time for 
the council, has just come to hand. Your first never reached 
me. I do not know that I have anything to propose to the Council 
worthy of its attention; but I think there is an abuse in the publica- 
tion of prayer-books that calls for some attention. There appears 
to be too great a variety; and some of them contain expressions that 
are calculated to scandalize Protestants. In some of the prayers 
addressed to the Blessed Virgin she is styled Divine; in others 
“our only hope.” In a Protestant country such expressions, I 
think, are calculated to do much injury to religion. I wish to 
propose to the Council, if I do not obtain it before, the appointment 
of a Coadjutor for the Diocese of Nashville, as my health is de- 
clining. I feel myself unable to attend to the arduous duties 
incumbent on me. 

I had not forgotten the request of the poor negro belonging to 
the Carmelites; but my endeavours to find his wife and children 
have, so far, been unsuccessful. I have found a coloured man in 
Nashville who is acquainted with the affair, and who has promised 
me to inquire into it. Be kind enough to assure the poor fellow 
that I will do all in my power to serve him.?? 


Tradition, supported by every sign, tells us that the 
bishop’s choice for a coadjutor was the Rev. Martin 
J. Spalding. Doubtless it was in part to prepare 
Nashville for such an event that the distinguished divine 
was brought to the city for a course of lectures in 
March, 1843. The report of these discourses to the 
Advocate may easily be read in such a light, no less 
than in that of appeasing the ecclesiastical authorities 
of Kentucky for the loss of so useful a clergyman. 

“Idem,” as the correspondent signs himself, speaks 
at length of the effect which Doctor Spalding produced 
on his crowded audiences, irrespective of creed; of his 
magnificent panegyric of Saint Patrick, Sunday, 
March 26; of how he was admired by all classes in 
the episcopal city; and of the good which he had 

22 Baltimore Archives, Case 25, M 7. 

26 


386 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


accomplished in the way of further dispelling religious 
prejudices. The article begins with an expression of 
gratitude to Kentucky for the many blessings which 
Tennessee has received from that state through the 
missionaries sent to keep alive the spark of Catholic 
faith in the hearts of the people, but especially for the 
gift of the diocese’s beloved pastor. In this latter 
connection, it says: 

Tennessee is indebted, even more than this, to Kentucky in 
sending her a bishop, a spiritual father to her children in the 
faith—one whose noble heart yearns for their welfare; one whose 
life, and health, and faculties are incessantly and unsparingly 
devoted to their eternal and temporal well-being.?° 

Father John Maguire, who is said to have wielded 
a facile pen, was probably the author of this communt- 
cation. In the light of tradition, the letter of Bishop 
Miles about the council at Baltimore, the friendship that 
existed between him and the former president of Saint 
J oseph’s College, and the popularity enjoyed by Doctor 
Spalding at Nashville, the import of the document 
would seem to be: Since Kentucky has done so much 
for 'Tennessee, let these good deeds now be crowned by 
giving the venerable head of our diocese the man whom 
he wishes to have as his coadjutor. 

Bishop Miles kept a watchful eye over even the most 
isolated of his scattered flock, and sought to keep alive 
their faith by letters of encouragement as well as by 
sending them a priest whenever he could. His big 
heart and broad zeal went out to all. A letter to Robert 
and Mary F. Aiken in far-off Washington County will 
serve as an example of how he forgot no one. Although 
occupied with preparations for his journey to the 
council, no less than with the affairs to which he had to 


23 Advocate, April 8, 1843. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 387 


attend before leaving home, on the eve of his departure, 


he wrote: 
Nashville, April 30, 1843. 
My dear Children:— 

The approach of the anniversary of your baptism and _ first 
communion reminds me of a duty which I have delayed too long. 
Knowing that some of my clergymen corresponded with you, and 
being overpowered with business since my return home, I have 
left that pleasing duty principally to them. I am just on the eve 
of setting out for Baltimore to be present at the Provincial Council, 
which commences on the fourteenth of May; and in order that you 
may have an opportunity to approach the holy sacraments I have 
directed Rev. Mr. O’Dowd to visit you for that purpose. He 
will set out for East Tennessee in two days, and will be with you 
about the middle of the month. He has to call at Athens and 
some other places where there are Catholics, in order to afford 
them the same opportunity. 

I am delighted to hear that you remain firm in the faith and in 
the practice of good works; and I trust in the goodness and mercy 
of God that you will persevere to the end. Heaven cannot fail 
to bless such fidelity; and although you seem almost left without 
a protecting arm to defend you, yet He who looks down with an 
eye of complacency from His seat of glory will never suffer you 
to be deserted so long as you are faithful to your engagements. 
Take courage then, my dear children. A great reward awaits 
you; for after the few years of toil and trouble amidst trials and 
temptations shall have passed away, that beneficent Father, for 
whose love you have sustained the combat, will reward your labours 
with a crown of immortal glory. 

This life with all its troubles must soon pass away. How 
cheering then is the prospect which futurity presents! The eye 
hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart 
of man what God hath prepared for them that love Him (I Cor., 
II, 9). Let us then continually aspire to the possession of those 
things that are promised us. Let us sigh continually for that happy 
country, where we shall be eternally inebriated, as the Psalmist 
expresses it, with the plenty of God’s house, and be made to drink 
of the torrent of His pleasure; for there with Him is the fountain 


388 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of life (Psalm XXXI)—the great river of the water of life, clear 
as crystal, which proceeds from the throne of God and of the 
Lamb. 

I am obliged from want of time to close my letter. Please 
remember me kindly to your excellent parents, and pray for your 
affectionate father in God. 

I am, my dear children, 


Sincerely yours in Christ, 
T Richard Pius Miles, Bishop of Nashville.*! 


No better proof that the saintly prelate was pressed 
for time is needed than that he did not visit his beloved 
alma mater of Saint Rose on his way east to the fifth 
provincial council; for there he found such rest of soul 
in the calm of the place, the memories of former days, 
and the attachment of his early friends that he would 
not have passed it by, had he found it possible to visit 
the convent. The Catholic Telegraph of May 6, 1843, 
shows that he had already passed through Cincinnati. 
Father Pozzo of Saint Joseph’s was his theologian at 
the council; but we did not discover whether he took 
the longer route by way of Somerset, Ohio, in order to 
travel with his official adviser, or proceeded directly 
from Cincinnati to Baltimore, and engaged the services 
of that learned Friar Preacher by letter.” 

The council convened on May 14, and lasted for one 
week. Salutary laws and regulations were enacted for 
the government of our American Church; the Holy 
Father was asked for the erection of new episcopal 
sees at Pittsburgh, Chicago, Milwaukee, Hartford, and 
Little Rock, together with the establishment of a vica- 
riate apostolic in Oregon; Father Ignatius Reynolds 

24 Tetter Addressed “Mr. Robert P. Aiken, near Jonesborough, Wash- 


ington County, Tennessee’”’ (Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province). 
25 United States Catholic Magazine, II, 377. 


BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 389 


was proposed as successor of Doctor England at 
Charleston, Father John McCloskey (afterwards our 
first cardinal) for coadjutor of New York, and Father 
John B. Fitzpatrick for the same position in Boston.”* 
What action was taken in regard to a coadjutor to 
Bishop Miles, or whether he actually requested that the 
council should solicit the appointment of one for him, 
we could not ascertain. 

Possibly the fathers of the council, misled by the 
deceptive outward appearance of the holy man’s health, 
and convinced that the maintenance of two prelates 
would be an excessive tax on Tennessee’s few Catholics, 
persuaded him to bear the burden of his labors alone for 
a while longer. Perhaps also they overlooked the fact 
that Father Spalding was well able to support himself, 
which was not unlikely one of the reasons why Doctor 
Miles specially desired him for the place of coadjutor. 

However, there can be little doubt that the expres- 
sions of good-will which he received from his brethren 
in the hierarchy cheered the hard-working man to 
renewed efforts, at the same time that he found a source 
of courage and consolation in the ever-increasing 
number of our bishops and in the proofs that he thus 
saw of the Church’s growth throughout the country. 
A further happiness was the presence of a former 
confrere whom he had not seen for some years, and 
whom Doctor Loras of Dubuque brought to the coun- 
cil as his theologian—Father Samuel C. Mazzuchelli. 
From Baltimore the subject of our narrative, probably 
on the invitation of Bishop Kenrick (whose estrange- 
ment was now a thing of the past), went to Philadelphia 


26 Concilia Provinciaha Baltimori, pp. 207 ff; Umted States Catholic 
Magazine, II, 376-378; Sura, History of the Church, III, 459-461. 


390 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


in search of means to help him out with the needs of his 
poor diocese. While there he also preached in Saint 
Joseph’s Church in behalf of the orphans of that city.” 

Immediately that his business in the north was 
completed the apostolic man hurried back to his own 
dear Tennessee, where he took up again the endless 
round of labors. By the fall of 1843 Father McAleer 
had succeeded in erecting a substantial brick church 
in Memphis, to which he gave the name of Saint Peter. 
Accordingly, Bishop Miles now made another visit 
through the western part of the state. At Memphis 
he administered the sacrament of confirmation in the 
new church; while at Jackson, in default of a temple 
of Catholic worship there, he performed the same cere- 
mony in the house of one of the faithful. Hverywhere 
he gladdened hearts as much by the sunshine of his 
disposition as by the warmth of his zeal and the piety 
of his sermons.”* 

Hardly had he returned to Nashville when he 
ordained two young men from his little seminary. 
They were William Howard who was born in Ireland, 
and Ivo Schacht, a native of Belgium. They received 
subdeaconship on the first Sunday of advent, Decem- 
ber 3, 1843; on the twenty-third of the same month they 
were given the order of deacon; and on the next day, 
Sunday, December 24, they were raised to the priest- 
hood during a solemn pontifical mass. Father Hoste, 
now the vicar general, assisted as deacon, and Father 
Alemany as subdeacon. Unless he was out on the 
missions, F'ather Maguire must have been the master 


27 Herald, May 5, and June 1, 1843. The tradition of Nashville is that 
Bishop Miles obtained more financial aid from Philadelphia than from 
any other place in the United States. 

28 Advocate, January 6, 1844. 





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BRIGHTER OUTLOOK 391 


of ceremonies, for he was the rector of the cathedral. 
After the mass, the bishop made a soulful and touching 
address to the newly ordained, with which, for the sake 
of those who thronged the little cathedral, were inter- 
woven explanations of the sublime ceremonies per- 
formed on the two young men.” 

Bishop Miles loved the ritual of the Church. A 
southerner himself by both birth and rearing, he under- 
stood the people of that section of the country, and knew 
well their love of the sublime and beautiful. For 
these reasons, although he could command no more 
than a handful of clergymen, he shrank from no incon- 
venience or even hardship in order to sing a solemn 
pontifical mass in the cathedral at least on the major 
feasts of the year. He saw too how non-Catholics 
were ever present in numbers on these occasions, felt 
that they offered an opportunity for making the life 
and teachings of the Church better known, and hoped 
that they might result in conversions. Thus on the 
morrow of the ordination just mentioned, which was 
Christmas Day, he treated Nashville to another of those 
exquisite celebrations which can be found only in the 
Catholic Church. In a letter dated at Nashville, 


December 28, 1843, “Amicus” writes: 


At ten o’clock the church was crowded to excess, principally by 
Protestants, to witness solemn high mass to be sung by the Bishop. 
The church was tastefully decorated by the pious Sisters of 
Charity, and presented a beautiful appearance. At half-past ten 
o'clock the choir, under the direction of Mr. King of Philadelphia, 
assisted by several other gentlemen of the city who kindly offered 
their services, performed in a manner highly creditable. Mr. 
Joseph McEvoy, one of the seminarians, presided: at the organ; 
and when the Venite Adoremus was intoned in heavenly strains, 


29 Ibid. 


392 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


there dropped many a tear from the pious flock in humble adoration 
before their God. 

The Bishop, being robed in his rich pontificals, accompanied by 
Very Rev. Lewis Hoste, V.G., as deacon, and Rev. Joseph Ale- 
many, O.P., as subdeacon, intoned high mass in a thrilling and 
sweet tone, so peculiar to him, and so well known to all who ever 
had the happiness to hear him sing high mass. The Rev. Mr. 
Schacht acted as master of ceremonies, and conducted all with 
the skill of one well acquainted with such ceremonies. After mass, 
Rev. John Maguire, the pastor of this congregation, who by his 
active zeal has done so much for religion, ascended the pulpit and 
delivered an eloquent and impressive discourse. 

The whole was to the Catholics of Nashville a day of joy and 
consolation. And we cannot be sufficiently grateful to God for 
sending to us a father who has placed all his solicitude in our 
welfare, and who, notwithstanding the many difficulties he has to 
contend with in his poor diocese, endeavours to educate, under his 
own immediate direction, a priesthood which, I hope, are ready to 
sacrifice every human consideration, and, like generous souls, to 
devote themselves to this emphatically arduous mission.®? 

Such was the state of the Diocese of Nashville at the 
close of the first period of its founder’s labor after his 
journey to Europe in its behalf. Under the circum- 
stances, and with the same limited means, no man could 
have accomplished more, or reasonably expected greater 
progress. While his zeal doubtless sighed for a more 
rapid growth of Catholicity in every way, Bishop Miles 
might well have congratulated himself on what he had 
done for religion in Tennessee. Possibly, all in all, he 
was satisfied, for we have found no expression of regret, 
or of fear lest something had been left untried, even 
though he was not one who would hesitate to criticize 


himself. 


30 Ibid. 


CHAPTER XVII 
LOSSES AND GAINS 


Bisuor Miles’ zeal caused him to rejoice in the 
reports which he received of the advance of Catholicity 
in other parts of the country, even though its progress 
in his own diocese was slow and uphill. It delighted 
him to hear of the appointment of new bishops. How- 
ever busy he might be, if at all possible, he sought to 
give them the pleasure of his presence at their conse- 
cration. ‘Thus, in spite of the fact that he was over- 
whelmed with care at this time, he journeyed to 
Cincinnati in order to act as assistant at the consecration 
of the Right Revs. Ignatius Reynolds for Charleston 
and John M. Henni for Milwaukee. The ceremony 
was performed, March 19, 1844, by Bishop Purcell in 
the cathedral built by the apostle of Ohio. Doctor 
Michael O’Connor of Pittsburgh was the other assis- 
tant.* 

Meanwhile, apparently near the close of the previous 
year (1843), Father O’Dowde, who had charge of the 
missions formerly attended by Father Maguire south 
of Nashville and in eastern Tennessee, had grown weary 
of his lonesome life there, and gone to the Diocese of 
New York. There he was given charge of Brownsville, 
Carthage, Copenhagen, and Watertown, in the present 
Diocese of Ogdensburg. As his name disappears from 


1 Advocate, March 23 and 30, 1844. 
393 


394 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the Catholic Almanac after 1846, he probably returned 
to Ireland about that time.” His place in Tennessee 
was taken by the Rev. William Fennelly, who seems 
to have come from the cathedral of Boston. It is pos- 
sible, however, that Father Fennelly offered his 
services to Bishop Miles merely until Fathers Howard 
and Schacht could be ordained and placed; for we find 
him at Maysville, Kentucky, in 1845, where he built 
Saint Patrick’s Church.* 

Father Stokes has told us of the model community 
life led by the diocesan clergy at Nashville, where the 
Bishop’s kindly character made every one happy, in 
spite of the privations imposed by poverty. ‘The priests 
were principally supported by means sent to the diocese 
from abroad. Economy of the strictest kind was a 
necessity. Doubtless it was this that caused all the 
clergy, with the exception of Father McAleer in 
Memphis, to make their home with their beloved prelate, 
though the greater number of them were practically 


2 Catholic Almanac, 1845, pp. 86-89; 1846, pp. 107-110. Father O’Dowde 
was educated partly at Mount Saint Mary’s, Emmitsburg, and partly in 
Nashville. Possibly he had made some of his studies before coming to 
America. Not a few early missionaries, finding life in the then undeveloped 
United States harder than they anticipated, returned to their native lands 
after a few years of poorly requited toil. 

3 Almanac, 1845, p. 131. There was a “Rev. Mr. Fennelly” at Boston 
for several years. The Almanac for 1844 (p. 143) gives his first name 
as “Lewis”; but the records at Nashville and subsequent Almanacs show 
that this was an error. In 1846, he took charge of various missions in 
Breckinridge and Daviess counties, Kentucky. In 1850, he went to the 
Diocese of Albany, New York, where he labored on various missions until 
his death. He was killed by a train, February 6, 1886. He was then 
pastor of Saint Patrick’s Church, Oneida, and eighty-six years of age. 
In the olden days of setting type by hand, when an error got into the 
Almanac it often remained a long time. Until the last years of his life, 
Father Fennelly’s name was very often written Finnelly. At Oneida 
he baptized Father Francis D. McShane, one of the censors of this 
book. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 395 


always on the road. ‘They were hunters of souls who 
could spare little time for domestic comforts. 

This arrangement continued for some years, appar- 
ently until after the ordination of Fathers Schacht 
and Howard. Their advancement to the priesthood no 
doubt combined with the expected arrival of Father 
Samuel L. Montgomery, one of the bishop’s early 
companions in labor, to determine the Father of the 
Church in Tennessee, in spite of his slender financial 
resources, to attempt a more convenient and efficient 
disposition of his clerical forces. Father Montgomery, 
the second Friar Preacher stationed at Nashville, seems 
to have arrived about the end of April, 1844. ‘Though 
somewhat advanced in age, he still retained much of 
his former strength and vigor. He too lived in the 
bishop’s house, whence he attended adjacent missions, 
as well as made himself useful generally.* 

Prior to the acquisition of this new helper, Father 
Schacht had taken residence at Clarksville, where he 
immediately began the erection of a brick church, the 
corner-stone for which he laid on June 11, 1844. 
Eight counties constituted his parish. In Humphreys 
County, where the bishop had secured a large area of 
land and was endeavoring to establish a Catholic 
colony, Father Schacht also soon had a church under 
way near Waverly. Preparations were started for a 
third on a lot donated for the purpose by Francis 
Rogan, seven miles from Gallatin. ‘The last two fanes 
were log structures, it is true, but they were neat and 
well-built, and in their day considered quite good 


4 Father Montgomery’s arrival at Nashville may be approximated from 
his last baptismal record at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, April 16, 1844. 


396 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


enough. Saint Michael’s, Robertson County, was also 
in Father Schacht’s district.” 

Shortly after his return from the episcopal conse- 
erations in Cincinnati, Bishop Miles made another 
journey through eastern Tennessee. On May 12, 1844, 
he confirmed Robert and Mary F. Aiken at Jones- 
borough. Possibly he took Father Howard with him, 
and it was at this time that the young priest was 
stationed at Montgomery, then the capital of Morgan 
County, thus becoming the first resident pastor of east 
Tennessee. “He carries with him to the mountains,” 
says a correspondent of the Advocate, “ardent zeal, 
and unaffected piety,’ indispensable requisites for per- 
severance in his lonely situation.°® 

When Nashville was definitely chosen as the capital 
of Tennessee (1843), it at once became certain that 
Campbell’s Hull would be selected for the location of 
the state-house. In like manner, probabilities had 
begun to loom strong that railroads and other works 
of public utility would eventually encroach on the 
neighborhood in which stood the episcopal residence. 
Accordingly, on the advice of friends, perhaps no less 
than pursuant to his own judgment, Bishop Miles now 
cast about for property in another location, whereon 
to erect his proposed new cathedral. A plot of ground, 
one hundred and twenty-two feet in length by seventy 
in width, on the corner of Cedar and Summer streets 
was secured from Vernon Stephenson at a cost of four 

5 Advocate, June 22, 1844. The letter to its editor was written at 
Clarksville, June 14, 1844. 

6 Advocate, June 22, 1844; Catholic Almanac, 1845, p. 128; cathedral 
records of Nashville. Montgomery, a mere hamlet, is about two miles 


from the present Wartburg. This letter to the Advocate was written at 
Nashville, June 8, 1844. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 397 


thousand four hundred and forty dollars. The land 
ran along the southern side of Cedar and faced west on 
Summer, which is now Fifth Avenue. Preparations 
were begun at once for a sacred edifice there.’ 

The corner-stone of the structure was laid on the 
Feast of Corpus Christi, June 6, 1844, Curiosity, 
favored by a beautiful day, brought an immense crowd 
to see a spectacle which was the first of its kind in 
Nashville. Major Daniel Graham, a Presbyterian and 
former state comptroller, whose home stood on the 
northeast corner of Summer and Cedar streets (just 
across from the proposed church), not only gave the 
use of his mansion to the bishop and clergy for the 
occasion, but also permitted a platform to be erected 
in front of it. Father Maguire held his large audience 
spellbound during a long, learned, and eloquent sermon, 
an outline of which is given in the Advocate.” 

After the sermon, Bishop Miles, his priests, and the 
little band of seminarians proceeded with the ceremony 
of blessing and laying the corner-stone. ‘Tall, straight, 
graceful, and handsome even in advancing years, the 
venerable prelate, always majestic in appearance, must 
have been especially so when clothed in the rich pon- 
tifical robes which he had received from abroad. He 
towered above all around him. The Advocate’s corres- 
pondent tells us as much. But what appears to have 
attracted his attention in a special manner was the good 
order preserved on the occasion, the great regard in 
which the bishop was held by all classes, and the fact 
that the non-Catholics of the city contributed far more 

7Deed Book VI, 675-676 (Recorder’s Office, Nashville); Nashville 


Sunday Herald, January 12, 1890. The deed is dated March 30, 1844. 
8 Letter of June 8, 1844, to the editor of the Advocate as in note 6. 


398 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


towards the enterprise than did those who professed 
the faith. All this he attributes to the “zeal, piety, and 
gentlemanly courtesy of Doctor Miles,” whose example 
is faithfully followed by his clergy.? Writing to a 
friend at the time, the bishop himself says: 


We laid the corner-stone of our Cathedral on Corpus Christi, 
which ceremony was witnessed by a large crowd of our citizens 
who conducted themselves on that occasion with as much propriety 
as could have been expected even in Baltimore. Father Maguire 
gave a fine discourse which has been much spoken of since. After 
the discourse, we went in procession from Major Graham’s to 
the cross erected in the foundations. This is the first time that 
the Mitre and Crozier have been seen in the streets of Nashville, 
and [they] must have produced»strange feelings in many who had 
not seen them before. There was, notwithstanding, great quiet 
throughout [ the ceremony |. 

One of the occurrences of that day which, I think, is worthy of 
particular notice is that Major Graham, who is a Presbyterian, 
should have treated us with such liberality. Tell me, can Baltimore 
boast anything like it? Our foundation is gradually rising; and 
in a few years we hope to have a temple for worship in some 
degree worthy of the Great Being for whom we intend it. You, 
who have seen and felt our privation in this respect, can give your 
Baltimore friends some idea of it. I say some idea, for it is 
impossible for those who never experienced anything of the kind 
to form an adequate idea of it.!° 

These advances were not slow to raise a storm of 
indignation in some minds. Sectarian journals as well 
as pulpits sounded alarms against the progress of 


Catholicity. Bishop Miles and Father Maguire took 


9 See preceding note. The writer of the communication signs himself 
“Viator”, and was probably a visiting clergyman. He states that in the 
papers placed in the corner-stone Father Alemany is given as the vicar 
general; but this is a mistake, for Father Hoste held that position. 

10 Miles, Nashville, June 13, 1844, to Mrs. Emilie Sanders, Baltimore 
(Francis X. Reuss Collection, Archives of American Catholic Historical 
Society of Philadelphia). Mrs. Charles Sanders, an exemplary Catholic, 
was a native of Baltimore, and was visiting her people at the time. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 399 


these attacks as a matter of course. But Father 
Schacht, younger and more impulsive, came back at the 
chief instigators with replies that must have made them 
wince. His answers were strong, logical, and well- 
written.” 

Prior to going to Tennessee, Father Alemany had 
been sent to Cuba in search of means to help not only 
his brethren, but also Bishop Miles. After the depar- 
ture of Father Stokes, the Spanish Friar Preacher 
succeeded him as rector of the little seminary at Nash- 
ville. No stricter or more conscientious man could have 
been selected for the place. How careful he was in 
regard to those who applied for admission may be seen 


from the following note to Bishop Blanc. 

I would be very thankful to you, if you would be so kind as to 
give me whatever information you might about the morals and 
conduct of Mr. , that young man who lived with you at 
the end of 1841. I cannot see how, if he was destined by Almighty 
God to be a clergyman, you did not keep him for your diocese; 
or how, if you had clergymen enough, he did not make beforehand 
some application to some other place. I beg of you to be so 
good as to give me some information about it; which will oblige 





me still more, and keep stronger in my memory the kindness and 
attention used by you and your whole house in my passing through 
New Orleans, going to and coming from Habana.” 


In the early summer of the same year our busy 
prelate had Father Alemany send a brief account of 


11 Advocate, August 24 and December 7, 1844. 

12 Letter written at Nashville, January 21, 1844 (Notre Dame Archives). 
The name of the addressee is not on the letter, but the context supplies it. 
In the same archives is a letter of Miles without either date or the ad- 
dressee’s name, but both are shown by the contents and the letter of Ale- 
many just quoted. Miles tells Blanc that he is forwarding to his care 
a letter for Alemany who is going to Cuba “on the quest.” It was at 
this time that Father Alemany obtained in Cuba a large crucifix which is 
now on the main altar at Saint Joseph’s, Somerset, Ohio, and which is 
considered one of the finest in the United States. 


400 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the diocese to the Propaganda. ‘Tennessee, it says, has 
a population of 850,000, among whom there are some 
eleven hundred Catholics. English is the language 
ordinarily used, but in some places German is spoken. 
The clergy, counting the bishop, are eight in number. 
There are five churches and chapels built. Besides 
these, there are three churches in course of construction, 
among which is the new cathedral of Nashville, whose 
corner-stone was laid on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 
or the sixth day of June just past. The diocesan sem- 
inary is under the direction of a Dominican. ‘The Sis- 
ters of Charity, seven in number, have a convent and 
a school attended by eighty pupils.”® 

Bishop Miles was an ardent believer in Catholic 
education, and even strove to do whatever he could for 
the advancement of the negro. In spite of his untoward 
circumstances, Father Alemany tells us, he had “two 
schools for young men and boys—one in Nashville, 
and another in Memphis.” ‘There was also “a free 
school for the colored people” in the episcopal city. At 
this time, the male school for the whites of Nashville 
was kept in connection with the seminary; while that 
for the blacks would seem to have been conducted, in 
the best way that it could, in the former frame church 
on Capitol Hill. Possibly Father McAleer had Eugene 
Magevney give religious instruction to the youths of 
Saint Peter’s Parish after hours, and for this reason 
Alemany’s relation classifies the “Memphis Academy” 
as a Catholic school.“ 

13 Propaganda Archives, America Centrale, Vol. XII]I—copy in Nash- 
ville Archives. 


14 This is the earliest mention we have seen of a Catholic school in 
Memphis. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 401 


In his love of learning, the Father of the Church in 
Tennessee was in quest of books wherever he went. 
From Europe, where Bishop O’Finan proved one of his 
best patrons in that regard, he obtained many volumes. 
With these collections not only was the little seminary 
well supplied for the time, but also, as we learn from the 
Alemany relation and other sources, two circulating 
libraries were started—one in Nashville, and the other 
at Saint Michael’s. Doctor Miles’ object in the estab- 
lishment of these libraries, Father Alemany states, was 
to afford those who loved to read, whether Catholic or 
non-Catholic, an opportunity to become informed on the 
teachings of the Church.” 

Meanwhile, Father N. D. Young had been elected 
prior at Saint Rose’s. Anxious to celebrate in a 
befitting manner possibly the first Saint Dominic’s 
Day which he had spent at that institution since he was 
a student there, Father Young persuaded Bishop Miles, 
then on business in Kentucky, to grace the occasion with 
his presence. Several Jesuit Fathers and Scholastics 
came from Saint Mary’s. ‘The Rev. William Murphy, 
president of the college, preached the panegyric. 
Bishop Miles sang the solemn pontifical mass, at which 
he gave minor orders to three Dominican students, and 
conferred subdeaconship on Brothers Sydney Albert 
Clarkson and Joseph Thomas Ryan. The church was 
not large enough to admit all who came for the 
ceremonies. 

Exhausted by his labors at home, our venerable 
prelate rested for a little more than a week at Saint 
Rose’s and Saint Catherine’s. ‘The love which the peo- 

15 The yearly Catholic Almanacs; Miles, Rome, February 18, 1841, to 
Bishop O’Finan, O.P. (Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province). 
27 


402 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


ple of the parish bore him made them ever anxious to 
have him confirm their children. Accordingly, on 
Sunday, August 11, 1844, he again administered the 
sacrament of confirmation at Saint Rose’s, before which 
he spoke to the children on the graces which confir- 
mation would bestow upon them, and the obligations 
which they were about to assume. After the high mass, 
he delivered a sermon on death which brought tears to 
every eye.” 

But we soon find the tireless man back in his own 
diocese, and occupied with its needs. On December 8, 
1844, he dedicated the Church of the Immaculate 
Conception, built by> Father Schacht at Clarksville. 
Before the ceremony, the bishop gave an “explanation 
of its character and object.” Father Maguire preached 
after the dedication. In the evening of the same day, 
Bishop Miles gave another sermon, and administered 
confirmation. “A mitred Bishop and priests in their 
respective robes,” writes the Advocate’s correspondent, 
“had never been seen publicly in our town; and you 
may well judge, Mr. Editor, of the anxious looks of 
the multitude.” ‘The non-Catholics were so taken with 
the holy prelate that many asked the favor of speaking 
with him. This he readily granted, and they were so 
well pleased that a goodly number of them thereafter 
attended the Immaculate Conception on the Sundays 
when mass was said at Clarksville. 

Saint Patrick’s, near Waverly, Humphreys County, 
progressed more slowly. Father Schacht himself dedi- 
cated this church on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1845."° 


16 Advocate, August 25, 1844. 
17 Advocate, April 12, 1845. 18 [bid. 





Rey lV OMmCHACGHT REV. WILLIAM HOWARD 





THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH 


CLARKSVILLE’S FIRST CHURCH, AND TWO PRIESTS 
ORDAINED BY BISHOP MILES 





LOSSES AND GAINS 403 


Meantime, Father Maguire had apparently been sent 
to Saint Louis on business in connection with the 
Nashville cathedral, for it was necessary to seek in many 
places the means required for its completion. Sunday, 
January 19, 1845, he preached in the church attached 
to Saint Louis University at the ten o’clock mass, and 
again in the evening to “the society for the conversion 
of sinners.” Says a contributor to the Catholic Herald: 
“He is a clear, cogent, and forcible speaker, his aim 
evidently being, not to dazzle the imagination with high 
sounding, pompous language, but to convince the mind 
and improve the heart. . . . ; and on both occasions 
[he] gained the warm approbation of large audi- 
ences.” ” 

Bishop Flaget still retained the titles to the property 
in Nashville which he had obtained from Anthony 
Foster in 1821. Bishop Miles now asked that it should 
be transferred to him. Evidently his request was misin- 
terpreted; for he writes to the vicar general of Louis- 
ville, Doctor Spalding: 

Nashville, August 22, 1845. 
Very Rev. dear Friend :— 

I perceive from your last favour that in our late correspondence 
we have mutually misunderstood each other, and the shortest way 
would be to say no more about it till we meet; when, if necessary, 
we will give the matter a further investigation. I beg leave only 
to say in addition that, in the remark made about the deed, I 
had no intention to allude to anything dishonourable to Bishop 
Flaget. There is no person living of my acquaintance whose 
virtue I respect, and whose person I honour more than Bishop 
Flaget; and consequently he is the last one that I would be dis- 
posed to speak of with disrespect. 

Be kind enough to attend to the deed when convenient, and 


19 Herald, February 13, 1845. The Herald’s letter is dated January 23. 


404 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


allow me to assure you that I am, as heretofore, 
Truly yours in Christ, 
T Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville.?° 


The friendly, amicable tone of this document, as is 
the case with practically all our bishop’s communica- 
tions, speaks for itself. That it allayed Doctor 
Spalding’s wrath is evident from the next letter of the 
apostle of Tennessee to him; for there the grateful 


prelate writes: 
Nashville, August 29, 1845. 
Very Rev. dear Sir:— 

Permit me to thank you for the very kind attention and great 
interest you have shown for my welfare. I have, agreeably to 
your instructions, procured a copy of the form in which the matter 
regarding the deed for the lot is to be managed, which I send you. 
With regard to the form of the deed, I think it had better be, as 
you say, made to my heirs or assigns, as it would be somewhat 
dificult to get myself incorporated, the legislature having refused 
that favour to another more liable to succeed than your humble 
servant. I should therefore be afraid to try it. It is not nec- 
essary to wait for the return of Mr. Maguire, as any other two 
witnesses acknowledging their signatures before the court of Louis- 
ville will be sufficient. 

The Sisters’ school has commenced under circumstances more 
flattering than usual. No news worthy your attention. 

Truly yours in Christ, 
Tt Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville.?} 


20 Archives of Nazareth Academy, near Bardstown, Kentucky. Father 
Spalding was now vicar general. Just before the date of this letter, or 
June 8, 1845, there died one of Tennessee’s great men whose life perhaps 
exercised considerable influence on the erection of Nashville into a diocese 
—Andrew Jackson. He was friendly towards Catholics, and it is not 
at all unlikely that his fame drew the attention of the bishops towards 
Tennessee, and had its part in making them believe that a bishopric 
should be established there. 

21 Archives of Nazareth Academy. There were two church lots in 


LOSSES AND GAINS 405 


Doubtless the bishop derived no little joy at this 
time from the good accomplished by the academy under 
the Sisters of Nazareth whom he had brought to his 
diocese. It had now attained an enviable reputation, 
and had some eighty or ninety pupils. All Nashville 
was jubilant over the exhibition of merit given at the 
closing exercises of the school year 1844-1845, which 
a contributor to the Advocate paints in eulogistic terms. 
He begins by saying: 

I was present at the annual exhibition of St. Mary’s Female 
Academy conducted by the Sisters of Charity. I was kindly 
received by Sister Serena, the Superior. Their neat, clean, and 
beautiful house charmed me. Its location is a delightful one; it is 
one of the best furnished houses in the city. I met with many of 
the elite of the city, accompanied by their blooming daughters 
full of hope and anxious to display the knowledge acquired during 
the scholastic year.?* 

The exercises, as was then the custom, consisted 
principally of examinations. Jather Maguire con- 
ducted them with skill, and the girls showed the 
thoroughness with which the school was conducted. It 
is worthy of note, in this connection, that the editor of 
the United States Catholic Magazine was so pleased 
with the account of the closing exercises of the Nash- 
ville institution that he chose it for notice in preference 
to all others which he saw for that year.** Another thing 
revealed in the account is the care with which Bishop 
question—one donated by Anthony Foster, the other bought from him. 
Possibly Bishop Flaget felt that he should be paid for the lot which he 
had purchased; while Bishop Miles thought that it belonged to the diocese, 
because the money paid for it had been contributed in Nashville. Flaget’s 
deed of the lots to Miles bears the date of September 3, 1845, and is in 
Deed Book VIII, pp. 161-162, Recorder’s Office, Nashville. Five 
dollars were the consideration paid for them. 


22 Advocate, July 26, 1845. 
23 U. S. C. Magazine, September, 1845. 


406 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Miles selected a home for the sisters and a location for 
the school. In the midst of his labors he received an 
invitation from Bishop Purcell to be present for the 
consecration of the new cathedral in Cincinnati, to 
which he responded in his usual happy manner, inter- 
spersing a little of the wit which he ever had at 
command. 


Nashville, September 8, 1845. 
Right Rev. dear Friend :— 

Your very kind invitation to be present at the consecration of 
your Cathedral has been received, and if possible I will do myself 
the honour to be there. I am at present engaged in directing the 
building of my own little affair; which I hope, by that time, will 
be sufficiently advanced to allow my absence for that grand occa- 
sion. As for the discourses of which you speak—there will be 
no necessity, I suppose, for me to preach, as there will no doubt 
be some good preachers present, and my awkward manner would 
only spoil the solemnity of the occasion. Don’t, then, count on 
any discourse from me. Anything that I can do I will do cheer- 
fully. 

Please remember me to Mrs. McClellan [ ?], with whom I deeply 
sympathize for her late bereavement. 

Sincerely and truly yours in Christ, 
T Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville.?* 


On his way north, the venerable prelate stopped at 
Saint Rose’s, where, on Sunday, October 26, 1845, he 
again held an ordination, and administered confirmation 
to the children of the parish. Brothers S. A. Clarkson 
and J. 'T. Ryan were now made deacons; Brother James 
Vincent Edelen received subdeaconship; whilst the 
tonsure and minor orders were conferred on Brothers 


Anthony Raymond Gangloff, Thomas Dominic Buck- 


24 Notre Dame Archives. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 407 


man, and Joseph Augustine Kelly.*”. Nor must we 
omit the expressions of high regard here repeated by 
the Advocate’s correspondent; for (it can not be too 
constantly borne in mind) to overlook the love, esteem, 
and admiration which he everywhere inspired were 
wholly to fail in forming a correct estimate of Bishop 
Miles. 

The many virtues of this Right Rev. Prelate [he says], and 
his amiability of character had long since endeared him to the 
people of this congregation, of which he was many years the pastor; 
and his occasional visits, prompted no doubt by a correspondent 
feeling of attachment for the people of his former charge, are 
always hailed with joy and congratulation. But the attestation 
of the high regard they have for him is the deep effect which 
his feeling appeals to them upon the subject of their eternal 
interests always produce. His voice has always the force of a 
pastor’s, a father’s, a friend’s. His visits give also to the Cath- 
olics, as well as to the Protestants, of this neighborhood the 
opportunity of witnessing some of the most imposing rites of our 
holy religion. j 

Bishop Purcell had made elaborate preparations for 
the consecration of his new Cathedral of Saint Peter, 
which took place on November 2, 1845. The Most 
Rev. Samuel Eccleston performed the ceremony, being 
the first archbishop who had ever gone west of the 
Alleghany Mountains. Eight other prelates were 
present. The celebration did not close until ‘Tuesday. 
Bishop Miles sang the solemn mass of requiem on 
Monday, November 3, and was no doubt selected for 
this function not merely on account of his splendid 
voice, but as much because of his great devotion to the 
dead.”° 


25 Advocate, November 1, 1845. Nearly all these men afterwards labored 
in the Diocese of Nashville. 

26 Telegraph, November 6, 1845; Advocate, November 8, 1845; U. S.C. 
Magazine, December, 1845. 


408 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The Association for the Propagation of the Faith 
originated in France; the greater part of its receipts 
were contributed in that country; it was largely kept 
alive by the charity of the Catholics there; and it con- 
sequently remained under Gallic direction. It was thus 
no more than what might have been expected that the 
society should show some partiality towards French 
bishops in the allotments of its alms, for the human 
element enters even into religion. Yet not a few of our 
hierarchy, including some who, it would seem, could 
have got along without such aid, protested strongly 
against such a distinction. Still another factor which 
doubtess figured in the distribution of these funds was 
the assiduity with which a prelate kept the needs of his 
diocese before the moderators of the society. 

Bishop Miles, it appears, wrote few letters to the 
association, and in these he gave the briefest relation of 
his church. Possibly he felt that this should suffice. So 
have we discovered but one letter of complaint from 
his pen against what he received. In all that he had 
done he had largely depended on this source of aid, for 
which he felt grateful. His cathedral was under way, 
a debt had been contracted, and he looked forward to 
making his payments. When, therefore, the holy 
prelate received notice that the allotment for Nashville 
had been greatly curtailed, he was almost stunned. 
However, he did not lose courage, for he ever trusted 
in God. ‘To Bishop Purcell he wrote, December 18, 
1845, to learn if money might be borrowed on reasonable 
terms in Cincinnati. Then he tells his friend: 

I find from a letter received last evening from Paris that my 


allocation for this year will be less than half what it has been 
heretofore, though at most I have never received more than half as 


LOSSES AND GAINS 409 


much as my nearest neighbour on the north. I have had all sorts of 
troubles and inconveniences to struggle with from the commence- 
ment, and they seem to increase rather than diminish. Why the 
gentlemen of the Propagation de la Foi have thought proper to 
treat me thus is more than I can tell.?? 


Although it had been intended to erect a church in 
Morgan County, Father Howard apparently did not 
meet with success there; for the Almanac of 1846 does 
not place him at Montgomery. Possibly, however, 
another arrangement of the missionary forces was 
adjudged better. At any rate, the diocesan account 
for that year tells us that “East Tennessee is attended 
occasionally from Nashville;” and that “all the prin- 
cipal towns and larger villages of the state have been 
visited during the past spring and summer, the counties 
being so divided among the clergymen as to enable 
them to discover the scattered Catholics, and explain 
to our dissenting brethren the tenets of our holy 
religion.””* 

In the summer of the same year, Father John M. 
Jacquet arrived from France. He was at once put in 
charge of the little seminary in order that Father 
Alemany might be sent to help Father McAleer in 
the western part of the state.” A correspondent from 
Memphis writes to the I’reeman’s Journal in November, 
1845: 


Several years since, the Catholics of this city, under the direction 
of the Rev. Michael McAleer, our zealous pastor, erected a fine 


27 Notre Dame Archives. The Annales show that Nashville received 
23,940 francs in 1842; 21,560 in 1843; 28,500 in 1844; and 18,500 in 1845. 
From this it would seem that Bishop Miles wrote a letter to the society 
at this time, and that in consequence his allotment for 1845 was raised 
somewhat. 

28 Catholic Almanac, 1846, p. 146. 

29 Father Jacquet’s first baptismal record at Nashville is dated August 
25, 1845; Father Alemany’s first at Memphis is dated August 16, 1845. 


410 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


brick church, forty feet by seventy feet, which is now about to be 
entirely and finely finished, with a beautiful spire surmounted by 
a cross, at an elevation of one hundred feet, and will no doubt 
soon be consecrated to the service of Almighty God, by our Right 
Rev. Bishop Miles of Nashville, under the name of St. Peter’s. 
The congregation now numbers about five hundred Catholics, and 
is rapidly on the increase. 

Latterly, our pastor, Mr. McAleer, has been assisted in his 
arduous and Jlaborious ministerial duties by the Rev. Joseph 
Alemany, a Spanish priest of the Order of St. Dominic, who was 
educated in Rome, and emigrated to America in 1840. His aid 
promises to be truly efficient and useful; and we confidently look 
for the most brilliant success to attend their combined efforts. 
And everything induces the belief that it will not be long before 
we will have a large and pious congregation regularly attending 
St. Peter’s.2° 

The author of the article from which the above 
quotation is taken signs himself “G. W. M.” He 
writes at length, and gives a glowing description of 
Tennessee’s metropolis. Memphis is not only pros- 
perous now; the city has also an advantageous location 
that must soon make it one of the greatest commercial 
centers in the south. Clearly his object is to attract the 
attention of Catholics in the north and east towards the 
Diocese of Nashville. In brief, the article is one among 
the many efforts of Bishop Miles at Catholic coloniza- 
tion in Tennessee. 

Archbishop Eccleston’s letter of notification that the 
sixth provincial council of Baltimore would convene in 
that city on May 10, 1846, and that the members of the 
hierarchy were expected to be there for the morning of 
the ninth, found the Father of the Church in Ten- 
nessee busy with his cathedral and diocese; but he at 


30 We did not find the Freeman’s Journal containing this article; but 
it is copied in the Advocate of December 20, 1845. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 411 


once made ready to obey the voice of authority. About 
this time also, it would seem, he suffered the loss of 
another of his clergy, Father William Howard. A 
tradition which seems plausible tells us that Bishop 
Miles used to say: “Bishop Hughes stole Fathers 
O’Dowde, Howard, and McAleer from me.”’ 

However it happened, we find Father Howard in the 
Diocese of New York in 1847; while it is certain that 
in those days some members of our American hierarchy 
had little scruple about accepting a good priest from 
another diocese, even, without consulting his bishop. 
Neither has one the heart severely to censure a clergy- 
man who would succumb to an invitation from the State 
of New York, where Catholicity was growing by leaps 
and bounds, in order to escape the privations in that 
of Tennessee. Bishop Miles ever acted on the principle 
that it were wiser to give an eweat to those who desired 
it; nor would he again, except for special reasons, 
receive a priest who had thus left his diocese.** 

The Catholic Telegraph of May 7, 1846, states that 
“the Right Rev. Bishops of Mobile, Natchez, Nashville, 
Louisville, St. Louis, Vincennes, and Dubuque passed 
through Cincinnati this week, attended by their theo- 
logians, on their way to the Baltimore council to 
convene next Sunday.” No doubt Doctor Miles’ heart 
again rejoiced in the renewed proof of the growth of 
our Church manifested by the presence of twice as many 

31 Father Howard was born in Ireland, but he seems to have made all 
his ecclesiastical studies at Nashville. He was stationed in the part of 
the State of New York taken to form the Diocese of Albany in 1847. He 
labored there on several missions, and was pastor of Saint Francis de 


Sales’ Church, Herkimer, when he retired, on account of ill health, in 
1886. He died on February 25, 1888. 


412 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


American prelates, less one, as had attended his first 
council six years before.” 

Unfortunately for Tennessee, Bishop Loras_ of 
Dubuque took Father McAleer with him to the council 
as his theologian. ‘There Memphis’ pastor met the 
Right Rev. John Hughes, later the first archbishop 
of New York, who induced him to come to his diocese. 
In this case, the Mreeman’s Journal of March 5, 1881, 
gives us written evidence of the influence through which 
the subject of our narrative lost a good, zealous, and 
able priest. ‘The departure of Father McAleer was 
deeply regretted by Tennessee’s holy prelate, but he 
felt that it were just as well to make no protest now that 
the capable ambassador of Christ had set his mind on 
an opportunity which he could not give him. Father 
McAleer’s notes in the church records show that his 
life at Memphis had not been a bed of roses. Possibly 
his trials there predisposed him to accept the call from 
New York, although his troubles in the south would 
seem to have been near their end, while the prospects 
for his church were becoming brighter every day.*° 

32 It is in their accounts of this council that the United States Catholic 
Magazine (June, 1846) and the Catholic weeklies give the dates and 
places of the births of the bishops, placing Miles’ birth on May 17, 1791. 
His theologian at this council was the Rev. Charles H. J. Carter of 
Philadelphia. 

33 Father Michael McAleer was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, March 
4, 1811. His parents brought him to the United States about five years 
later, and settled at Frederick, Maryland. He studied at Mount Saint 
Mary’s, Emmitsburg, and was ordained in Cincinnati by Bishop Purcell 
on Thursday, November 23, 1837. From that time, until he went to 
Tennessee (1840), he labored at Canton, Ohio, and on adjacent missions. 
In New York City, he was at once appointed pastor of Saint Columba’s 
Church, retaining the charge until his death, February 24, 1881. He was 


buried at Frederick, Maryland. Father McAleer was a splendid preacher 
as well as an excellent priest and a man of considerable erudition. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 413 


Evidently our good bishop’s appeal to the Association 
for the Propagation of the Faith had produced its effect. 
His allowance was enlarged. Indeed, either the society 
advanced him a part of what should be granted him at 
the end of 1846, or he obtained a further assistance 
from another foreign source, for he wrote from the 
council to his agent in Philadelphia, Mark Anthony 
Frenaye: 

Baltimore, May 13, 1846. 
Mr. Frenaye:— 

Enclosed you will find a check for 18,054:15 francs, which you 
will please sell for me to the best advantage. By tomorrow’s mail 
I will send you the second. I have signed and endorsed these 
checks, and you will have the goodness to fill up the blanks. As it 
will be some time before I shall go home, I will still ask you another 
favour—that you would be kind enough to exchange the proceeds 
of this check for checks on Nashville, if possible or expedient, and 
send the same immediately to Mr. Michael Burns, Nashville, 
reserving a memorandum of the amount, so that I may see it, when 
I shall have the pleasure of visiting my friends in Philadelphia. 
which will be soon. 

Very grateful for past favours, I am, dear Sir, 

Truly yours in Christ, 
Tt Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville. 

P. S.—I have concluded that, as the distance is so small, I would 
send both [checks] together. Have the goodness to inform me, 
at your first leisure, if they have arrived safe. 

Rees, BN ee 

By this time the bishop of Philadelphia had become 
one of the most sympathetic friends that the distressed 
apostle of Tennessee had among our American hier- 
archy. Doubtless it was on Doctor Kenrick’s invitation 

34 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 


December, 1902. Mark A. Frenaye was long the trusted agent in such 
matters for many American bishops and priests. 


414 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


that he again visited the City of Brotherly Love after 
the council in order to make another collection in 
behalf of his cathedral and diocese. No doubt either, 
the editor of the Catholic Herald received authoritative 
word to print the following notice in his paper: 

The Right Rev. Dr. Miles, Bishop of Nashville, preached at 
St. Mary’s Church on Sunday last, after which a collection was 
taken up in aid of his diocess, which is in a very impoverished 
state, owing to the limited number of Catholics resident there, 
and the manner in which they are scattered throughout the diocess. 
Their zeal is in every way commendable; but, situated as they are, 
they cannot render that zeal as effective as the pressing wants of | 
the diocess imperatively demand. 

Bishop Miles feelingly enumerated some of the many privations 
under which he has labored since he took charge of his diocess, 
the arduous duties of which he was obliged for a time to discharge 
himself, there being not a single clergyman to assist him in the 
many calls appertaining to his sacred office. We sincerely hope 
that his mission among us and our fellow Catholics of the neigh- 
boring cities may meet with that complete success which he so 
well merits, and to which his cause is so eminently entitled.°° 

From Philadelphia he is said to have continued his 
way to New York for the same purpose. Perhaps 
Bishop Hughes wished, in this way, to make some sort 
of amende honorable for taking Father McAleer from 
Tennessee. Tradition informs us that the Nashville 
prelate was well repaid for these journeys. Similarly, 
the Right Rev. John J. Chanche of Natchez writes to 
Doctor Blanc, July 16, 1846: “I left Bishop Miles in 
the north making very successful collections.” °° 

During his absence, his beloved Saint Mary’s 
Academy closed its fourth year of successful ‘work 
with an examination which was considered the best 


35 Herald, June 18, 1846. 
36 Notre Dame Archives. 


LOSSES AND GAINS 415 


thing of the kind that Nashville had hitherto witnessed. 
The elite of the city were present. Father Maguire 
again conducted the exercises. Governor Aaron V. 
Brown addressed the graduates, and gave them their 
diplomas. The noted geologist and chemist, Doctor 
Gerard Troost, complimented the day’s exhibition in 
terms not a little eulogistic; while the public press was 
unsparing in its praise of the sisters and their school. 
The Advocate’s contributor who gives us this infor- 
mation closes his article with: “The venerable Bishop 
Miles is expected home in a few days from the North. 
The Cathedral will be completed by Christmas. Our 
congregation is increasing very fast. Our city is very 
healthy, and is improving rapidly.” ** 

But the holy prelate had hardly reached home, when 
he learned that Father John Maguire had also decided 
to leave Tennessee. The loss of three missionaries in 
so short a time, as was but natural, sorely tried the 
bishop’s patience. Father Maguire’s action, although 
he was within his rights as such things then went, pro- 
voked Bishop Miles all the more because in him the 
diocese lost not only one of its most efficient priests, 
but even the one who had charge of its best parish, and 
to whom many favors had been shown. At first it was 
thought that he went to Ohio. Two letters of the 
bishop to Doctor Purcell, in which the matter is referred 
to, at once reveal the wounded feelings of 'Tennessee’s 
apostle, and come nearer to being severe and critical 
in judgment than any other we have seen from his pen.** 

37 Catholic Advocate, July 20, 1846. The article is dated July 20, and 
is signed “M. S. M.” Doubtless work on the cathedral was slackened 
for want of funds, for it was not completed for nearly a year later. 


38 Bishop Miles to Bishop Purcell, August 28 and September 8 (‘‘Feast 
of the Nativity B. V. M.’”), 1846 (Notre Dame Archives). 


416 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH- IN TENNESSEE 


However, it would perhaps be as unjust to censure the 
capable, zealous, and energetic priest’s determination, 
as it would be wrong to blame Bishop Miles, had he 
momentarily lost his temper under the circumstances. 

An educated man himself, Father Maguire seems 
to have felt that he would like to try his hand at teaching 
for a while, and so to have turned his mind to Kentucky, 
instead of to Ohio. At the end of the scholastic year 
of 1845-1846, the Jesuit Fathers gave up Saint Mary’s 
College in the former state. He knew that Bishop 
Chabrat and others did not wish to see the college 
closed. Consequently he must have offered himself 
for this good work, for the Catholic Advocate of 


December 19, 1846, announces: 

It will be gratifying to the patrons of St. Mary’s College to 
learn that the talented Rev. J. Maguire, so favorably known in 
Kentucky and elsewhere, has associated himself to Rev. J[ulian] 
Delaune in the management of this flourishing institution, where 
he will discharge the duties of professor.2®? We are informed that 
the daily increase of students has already secured a fair prospect 
of prosperity and usefulness to the college, and we may with 
confidence recommend it to parents who are anxious to give their 
children a good and sound education. The second session will 
begin on the 12th of March, 1847.4° 


Father Thomas L. Grace seems to have been sent 
to Memphis that he might help there while Father 


39 Father Delaune was brought from the Diocese of. Vincennes. 

40 Father John D. Maguire was born in County Cavan, Ireland. 
His early education was directed by his Uncle, the Right Rev. George 
J. Browne, bishop first of Galway, and then of Elphin. Father Maguire 
completed his course of divinity at Mount Saint Mary’s, Emmitsburg, 
where he seems to have been ordained by Bishop Miles in May, 1840. 
He was a man of scholarly attainments and a splendid ‘orator. During 
the scholastic year of 1847-1848 he was vice president of Saint Mary’s 
College, Kentucky. From the fall of 1848 to that of 1850, he held the 
position of president in the same institution, and continued teaching 
there until 1851. Shortly before he left Tennessee, a younger brother 


LOSSES AND GAINS 417 


McAleer was at the Baltimore council. But now, at 
the earnest solicitation of Bishop Miles for help, he was 
transferred from Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, where he 
held the posts of professor and subprior, and stationed 
at Saint Peter’s.** 

Our tireless prelate continued his labors on the 
missions, no less than with his cathedral. August 28, 
1846, he wrote to Bishop Purcell to learn if he could 
rely on John Koehneke of Cincinnati to build a good 
organ for him.* A little later, he started on a diocesan 
visitation, especially in western Tennessee. Perhaps, 
in fact, we can not close the present chapter in a 
manner more acceptable to the Catholics of Memphis 
than with the account of the dedication of their first 
church given in the Catholic Advocate of December 
19, 1846, which states: 


whom he had brought from Ireland to study for the American missions 
died at Mount Saint Mary’s, Emmitsburg. From 1851 to 1854 he was 
pastor of Saint Peter’s, Lexington, Kentucky, where he built the first 
Catholic school erected in that city. In 1854 and 1855, he was pastor 
of Saint Peter’s, Newport, Kentucky. The Almanac of 1856 shows him 
pastor of the cathedral in Chicago. The Catholic Telegraph of June 29, 
1910, says that he was for a while at Notre Dame University; but as 
the records of that institution do not reveal his name, it is probable 
that this error was occasioned by the fact that Saint Mary’s College, Ken- 
tucky, was under the Fathers of the Holy Cross late in 1846 (Catholic 
Almanac, 1847, p. 128; Le Trés Rév. Pére Basile-Antoine-Marie Moreau, 
pp. 194-195). Father Maguire was likely with them there for a while. 

From Chicago, it would seem, he returned to Ireland because of the 
ill health of his uncle, Bishop Browne, who died on December 1, 1858. 
A few years later, the talented young priest (he was only in his early 
forties) died in Egypt while on a tour for literary purposes. 

41 Father McAleer’s last baptismal record at Memphis is dated April 
7, 1846. Father Grace records for the first time on April 14, 1846, and 
a few times in May. From the fall of the same year he records regularly. 
On November 17, 1846, Father Alemany signs himself “vice pastor.” 

42 Notre Dame Archives. 


28 


418 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


We learn from a gentleman recently from Memphis that on 
Sunday, the 22nd of November, the beautiful Catholic Church 
at that place, recently erected by the Rev. Michael McAleer, 
and now under the pastoral care of the Rev. Messrs. Alemany 
and Grace, O.S.D., was solemnly dedicated to the service of 
Almighty God, under the patronage of St. Peter, by the Right 
Rev. R. P. Miles, assisted by the Rev. Geo. Wilson, Provincial of 
the Order of Dominicans, with the Pastors of the congregation. 
The day was beautiful, and the church was crowded to overflowing. 
The Rev. Mr. Wilson sung High Mass, and the Bishop delivered 
a very eloquent and appropriate sermon on the occasion. 

In the afternoon of the same day Vespers were sung, and the 
Sacrament of Confirmation was administered by the bishop to about 
forty persons, several of whom were recent converts. The whole 
service of the day, being conducted according to the manner 
prescribed by the ritual, made a most striking and favorable im- 
pression upon the minds of the large and respectable audience, a 
majority of whom were Protestants, and who had never previously 
witnessed anything of the kind. 

A small belfry, instead of a spire, crowned the church. 
Doubtless one of the reasons for this change was the 
difficulty of getting money. Indeed, the erection of the 
edifice itself had been a slow, tedious process; and it 
was used for divine service long before completion. 
By this time also, the pastors could see that it were 
unwise to spend much in ornamentation, for the influx 
of Catholics was such that a larger temple of prayer 
would soon be required to accommodate them. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 


No doubt the reader has wondered how Bishop Miles 
managed to make both ends meet with so small an 
income. One of the explanations of this feat is the 
simple life led by himself and his priests. Father 
Samuel Montgomery, who had shown no little skill in 
the management of such affairs while syndic at Saint 
Rose’s, was appointed steward of the episcopal house- 
hold; and his meager book of accounts which has happily 
escaped the ravages of time reveals the rigid economy 
practised there. Only necessaries were purchased; 
nothing was wasted.” Nevertheless at no time was the 
holy prelate’s hand closed to the poor. In fact, he 
sought in every way to aid the honest and deserving, 
whatever their color, nationality, or creed. This plain, 
frugal life and impartial charity united with his other 
virtues to make him so justly and universally beloved. 

The experience of the bishop during the period just 
recounted convinced him that he could not with safety 
rely on the perseverance of freer priests in his diocese, 
be they ever so zealous and unselfish. Their privations 
in ‘Tennessee were such that they could hardly be 
expected to decline better opportunities offered them 
in other places. After the departure of Fathers 
McAleer and Maguire, therefore, the man of God 


1 Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province. 


419 


420 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


determined to proffer Memphis to a religious order. 
Naturally, his preference was the institute to which 
he had belonged; for, apart from other reasons, two 
of its members were already in the city. 

Doubtless the tender was made in November, 1846, 
while the bishop was in Memphis for the dedication of 
Saint Peter’s. At any rate, the church property there 
was deeded over to the Dominicans on January 15, 
1847. We have discovered no statement to that effect; 
yet it is quite probable that the zealous prelate was 
in the city on another apostolic visitation at the time 
of the transfer, even though such a tour then involved 
more time as well as infinitely more trials and fatigue 
than a journey from Memphis to New York in our 
day. It goes without saying that the offer was readily 
accepted. Besides, the arrangement was no less bene- 
ficial to the diocese than helpful to the Province of 
Saint Joseph. On the one hand, it assured a suc- 
cession of priests in western ‘Tennessee. On the other 
it gave the fathers the best place which they had so far 
obtained, though the province had been in existence 
for forty years, and none in the country had labored 
harder than they.’ 

Because of his age and infirmities, Bishop Flaget 
had placed the administration of his diocese into the 
hands of his coadjutor, Doctor Chabrat. In 1847, this 

2A photostat copy of the deed. Father Martin P. Spalding’s notes 
on the province say that Saint Peter’s was given to the Order in 1845. 
But we found no record to that effect; and the facts in the case show 
the statement to be erroneous. Doubtless Father Spalding drew his con- 
clusion from the presence of Father Alemany in Memphis at that time 
(or depended on papers which made the same statement on the same 


grounds). Father McAleer was pastor of Saint Peter’s until his resig- 
nation at the council of Baltimore, in May, 1846. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 421 


prelate determined to make a visitation of the parishes 
of Kentucky in order to help the people the better to 
make the general jubilee which was celebrated that 
year. But while thus occupied he suffered a renewed 
attack of an ocular malady which had long threatened 
him with blindness. He then determined to go to 
Europe for treatment, and engaged the ever-willing 
_ Bishop Miles to complete the visitation of the diocese.* 

In this way the subject of our narrative spent a 
considerable portion of the jubilee year in Kentucky. 
From about the middle of June to the middle of July, 
he labored in Spencer, Nelson, Washington, and 
Marion counties. Among the places visited were 
Taylorsville, Fairfield, Saint Vincent’s, Bardstown, 
New Haven, Gate’s Station, Saint Rose’s, and Holy 
Cross, and the academies of Nazareth, Lorretto, Geth- 
semani (where now stands Kentucky’s celebrated 
Trappist monastery), and Saint Magdalen’s (the 
present Saint Catherine’s). On all these occasions, he 
preached and administered the sacrament of confir- 
mation. “His discourses,” says the Advocate, “made a 
very favorable and beneficial impression.” On Monday 
morning, July 12, he blessed and laid the corner-stone 
of Saint Magdalen’s new chapel belonging to the 
Dominican Sisters, near Springfield.* 

At this juncture, he was obliged to return to his 
own diocese, but he promised to return to Kentucky 
that he might carry out his engagement with Bishop 
Chabrat to make visitations in Breckinridge, Hardin, 
Daviess, Union, and other western counties.? That 

3 Advocate, May 29, 1847. 


4 Advocate, July 24, 1847. 
5 Advocates of May 29 and July 24, 1847. 


422 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


he did so, if at all possible, we may take for granted, 
although we did not discover any account of his 
labors in these places; for there never lived a man 
truer to his word than was the Father of the Church 
in Tennessee. However, these toils in Kentucky, the 
fulfillment of the jubilee in his own diocese, work on 
his own cathedral, and other cares must have given 
him a busy year.® August 18, 1847, he sent an account 
of his diocese to the Propaganda, the substance of which 
is as follows. 

Although it is ten years since his appointment to 
the See of Nashville, he has been bishop only nine, for 
a year elapsed before he accepted the dreaded burden. 
During this time, the Catholic religion has made little 
progress in the diocese in comparison with its rapid 


strides in other parts of the country. However, in view 
of the long neglect of Tennessee; the deep root taken 


there by infidelity, no less than a strong dislike towards 
and wide-spread prejudices against Catholicity which 
gained ground as a consequence of this neglect; and the 
fact that the state offers few advantages to immigrants 
from Europe, he thinks it no exaggeration to say that 
much good has been accomplished. 

A decade ago, there was not a single priest in the 
state. Even in 1840 he had but one little church; 
while, with the exception of Nashville and on the 
public works at Memphis and Athens, there were not 
more than ten Catholics in any locality. The total 
number did not exceed three or four hundred. ‘Today 
there are six priests, six churches, three chapels, a 

6 The Advocates of September 11 and 25, 1847, show that Bishop Cha- 
brat’s resignation of his coadjutorship (made on account of his health) 


was accepted at this time; but this made no difference in regard to Bishop 
Miles’ visitation, for he would just as readily do it for Bishop Flaget. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 423 


convent of Sisters of Charity who conduct a school and 
academy for girls, a free school for negroes, and a 
Catholic population of some fifteen hundred. Our holy 
faith is continually preached in places where a priest 
was never heard before. Not more than eighty-five 
adults have been received into the Church since he took 
charge of the diocese; but the number of conversions 
assumes a greater proportion year by year, which gives 
hope for a more abundant harvest in the future.‘ 

This frank, open exposition of the state of his diocese, 
without pretense, and without effort to cover up the 
slow growth of religion in that part of the Lord’s 
vineyard under his charge, must have pleased the sacred 
congregation. If one may judge by the reports of 
conversions here and there, the account rather lessened 
than enlarged the number of those who had come into 
the Church. Doubtless it was due to his many cares at 
the time that he overlooked the little seminary, the two 
schools for Catholic boys, and the cathedral that was 
nearing completion. On September 10, 1847, he wrote 
to Bishop Purcell in regard to this last item: 


I have at length so far advanced with my church as to have 
reason to hope that it will be ready for dedication on the last 
Sunday of October, and have set that time for it. May I indulge 
the hope of having your company on that occasion? I shall be 
truly gratified if you can do me that favour. As our church is 
not paid for, it will only be blessed for the present. If you will 
honour us with your presence on that occasion, we shall expect 
you to preach the dedication sermon. The organ intended for 
our church is being built in your city. I hope that good Dutchman 
will not disappoint us.® 


7A copy in the Nashville Archives from the Propaganda, Udienza di 
Signore Nostro del 1847, Vol. 107, fol. 1248. 
8 Notre Dame Archives. 


424 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The time between the date of this letter and the end 
of October was no doubt well filled in with episcopal 
visitations in Kentucky and his own diocese. However, 
work on the cathedral progressed as he anticipated; 
for the Nashville Daily Union of November 3, 1847, 
says: “On Sunday, the 31st ultimo, a large body of our 
fellow-citizens witnessed a novel and imposing spec- 
tacle—the dedication of the new Catholic Cathedral, 
just completed. This beautiful edifice, situated on the 
eorner of Cedar and Summer streets, is an ornament to 
our city.” Then follows a description of the church 
and ceremonies, but we prefer that contained in the 
Catholic Advocate of November 20. Yet we must not 
omit the statement of the Union that the cathedral 
“reflects credit upon its architect’’, and that “Dr. Miles 
deserves much praise for his taste and enterprise in 
decorating our city with this additional architectural! 
monument.” 

The new Cathedral of Nashville [ says the Advocate of November 
20, 1847] was dedicated to Almighty God on the 31st ultimo under 
the name and patronage of the Blessed Virgin of the Seven Dolors. 
It is a chaste and beautiful specimen of Grecian architecture, and 
is situated in the heart of the city. Its external dimensions are 
one hundred and ten feet in length by sixty in breadth. The 
ceiling is thirty-two feet above the floor; it is flat, and is taste- 
fully decorated with mouldings and square panel work. The 
front presents a neat half portico supported by two fine Ionic 
columns; and the entire exterior and interior of the edifice are 
ornamented with pilasters placed at suitable distances, imparting 
additional strength to the walls. 

Under the Cathedral there is a spacious and commodious base- 
ment designed for catechism classes and school rooms. The high 
altar stands in a semicircular recess, and is surmounted by an 
appropriate group of statuary representing the Most Sorrowful 
Mother receiving the lifeless body of her dear son when He was 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 425 


taken down from the cross, these principal figures being surrounded 
by a circle of angels. The figures are composed of what is called 
sand-stone paper, and the whole group was procured in France. 

The cost of the structure, the Advocate proceeds to 
state, was at least $30,000, which were collected by 
Bishop Miles not merely in Nashville, but also in many 
parts of the United States. Because a considerable 
debt still remains on the cathedral, it could be only 
blessed; but the worthy bishop hopes to have it conse- 
erated at a future day. The man of God himself 
performed the solemn ceremony of dedication, during 
which Bishop Purcell explained from a platform the 
significance of all that was done. Bishop Portier of 
Mobile then sang a solemn high mass, and Doctor M. 
J. Spalding delivered the sermon for the occasion. 
Among the clergy present was Father Elisha J. Durbin 
who doubtless came to witness the consummation for 
which he had often prayed. Bishop Purcell preached 
again in the evening. Both the Advocate and the 
Union assure us that great crowds witnessed the cere- 
mony, and listened to the preaching with rapt attention. 

Doctor Spalding was persuaded to remain another 
week at Nashville, and to lecture every night on religion 
or some point of Catholic faith. The impression which 
he produced was profound. Indeed, says the corres- 
pondent, “the progress of our holy religion in the 
Diocese of Nashville cannot but be consoling to every 
Catholic heart.” Then he proceeds to relate the early 
trials which the man of God had to face, to tell what 
he had accomplished in spite of almost unparalleled 
difficulties, and to speak of the “excellent and well- 
selected ecclesiastical library” which he had collected, 
closing his article with these words: “All this he has 


426 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


been able to effect, through the divine blessing, with 
the most scanty means. ‘Thus has one of the most 
unpromising fields in the American Church been made 
to yield an abundant harvest.” 

Another item which deserves notice here appeared 
in the previous issue of the Advocate. Here we learn 
that on the day after the dedication Bishop Purcell 
confirmed a class of twenty-two in the new cathedral, 
fourteen of whom were converts. Besides these, there 
were four others who had lately been received into the 
Church, but had not had time to prepare for the recep- 
tion of the sacrament.’ From this one may see how 
modest Doctor Miles was in the account of his diocese 
which he sent to Rome. Possibly he meant to say that 
there had been eighty-five converts in the episcopal city, 
where, the Advocate’s notice of the dedication assures 
us, the Catholics now numbered some eight hundred. 

The Seven Dolors Cathedral, all things considered, 
was really a noteworthy achievement; and it was so 
considered at the time. Its cost, said by some to have 
been from $40,000 to $50,000, represented a huge sum 
for that day; yet there were not more than fifteen hun- 
dred Catholics in all Tennessee, who were poor as well 
as scattered throughout the state. Hven now Nashville 
has not a more beautiful or devotional church. 
William Strickland, an architect of no mean reputation 
and the builder of Tennessee’s state capitol, is reported 
to have considered it his finest ecclesiastical structure.” 

Bishop Miles himself was certainly well pleased with 

9 Advocate, November 13, 1847. The publication of the account of the 
dedication was delayed through a mishap in the mails, which caused this 
item to appear before it. 


10 The Tennessee state capitol, minus the cupola which is not a con- 
ception of Strickland, is considered a gem of Greek architecture. 





INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR OF THE SEVEN DOLORS CATHEDRAL 


BUILT BY BISHOP MILES, STILL ONE OF NASHVILLE’S FINEST CHURCHES, 
AND REGARDED AS A SHRINE BY ITS CATHOLICS 





PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 427 


it, while its beneficial effects soon became evident. In 
a letter to Bishop Purcell, December 9, 1847, he writes: 
“We are much gratified to see a fine congregation in 
our new church every Sunday. And there are fine 
prospects of increase, which, though slow, will be steady. 
Sit nomen Domini benedictum! [ Blessed be the name of 
the Lord!] Be kind enough to beg of God to aid our 
feeble efforts.” ‘T'wo other letters, of dates respectively 
January 21 and February 3, 1848, to Doctor Purcell 
show that our anxious prelate’s heart had been glad- 
dened by the reception of a beautiful madonna for his 
cathedral.” 

In Memphis also Fathers Alemany and Grace had 
started a ladies’ altar society for the beautification of 
the house of God, whose labors soon bore good fruit. 
The deft fingers of its members wrought vestments 
for the clergy and articles, useful as well as ornamen- 
tal, for the altar and sanctuary. Among the note- 
worthy things which they did was to have a crucifixion 
painted by the well-known Tennessee artist, William 
Cooper. This picture long hung over the high altar, 
and was an object of general admiration. In October, 
1847, they held a bazaar in Hightower Hall to raise 
funds for the purchase of a large bell for the church.” 
Father Alemany, however, was soon made master of 
novices in Kentucky. Father James Hyacinth Clark- 
son, a friend of the bishop, took his place as pastor of 
Saint Peter’s.”* 

The Memphis parish, in fact, was now fast overtaking 

11 All these letters are in the Notre Dame Archives. 

12 Advocate, November 6, 1847, and January 22, 1848. 


13 Father Alemany’s last baptism at Saint Peter’s was on November 
27, and Father Clarkson’s first on December 15, 1847. 


428 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


that of Nashville. While on a visitation of the western 
part of his diocese, Bishop Miles administered confir- 
mation there, February 27, 1848, to a class of twenty- 
four, three of whom were converts. In an interesting 
account of the event the correspondent of the 4dvocate 


states: 

Our congregation is rapidly increasing. ‘The number is now at 
least seven hundred. In general intelligence and respectability 
we compare favorably with any other class of our citizens. Many 
of the most worthy of the Protestants attend regularly at our 
church, and evince great liberality on all occasions. Though few 
converts have as yet been made, we trust the good seed that is 
sown will, in due time, fructify and produce a hundred fold. 

Hardly had the bishop reached home when he was 
rejoiced by the arrival of an Italian priest who soon 
proved one of the most zealous and _ self-sacrificing 
missionaries of ‘Tennessee—Father Aloysius Orengo, 
O.P.” After the departure of the Rev. John Maguire, 
Father Schacht had been brought from Clarksville to 
Nashville.*° On the return of the bishop, pursuant to 
his desire of having the scattered Catholics visited as 
frequently as possible, he sent the Belgian priest on 
a tour of the eastern part of the state. It was a hard 
journey. Because the streams were much swollen by 
rains, Father Schacht had not merely to cross mountains 
by the roughest roads; in nearly every instance he was 
obliged to make his horse swim the rivers. However, 

14 Advocate of March 18, 1848. The article is dated March 5, and 
ify a fare Bite d FN ase 

15 Father Orengo wrote on the title-page of a Gury’s Theologia Moralis 
that he arrived in Nashville on March 24, 1847; but this was written long 
after, when he had forgotten the year. The baptismal records at Saint 
Rose’s, Kentucky, show that he was there until in February, 1848. His 


first record at Nashville is dated March 26, 1848. 
16 Catholic Almanac, 1847, p. 134. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 429 


he continued his way, searching in every direction for 
those who might be of the faith. 

In Morgan County, the first place he mentions, the 
colony of Germans and Irish, who had gathered there 
largely through the instrumentality of Bishop Miles, 
was visited, and found to be on the increase. The 
agent of the land company gave a bond for fifty acres 
of ground which were to be set apart for a priest, and 
donated a lot in Wartburg for a church and school, 
the latter of which the Catholics engaged to build in the 
near future. Thence the missionary journeyed south- 
ward to Tellico Plains, at the foot of the Unaka or 
Great Smoky Mountains, Monroe County, where he 
discovered about thirty Catholic emigrants from Hol- 
land. Here Judge Johnson, for whom most of the 
Hollanders labored, deeded to the bishop two acres of 
land near the iron works for a church. The Bayer 
Settlement, Polk County, was visited next; and while 
there our ambassador of Christ went to a neighboring 
village occupied by a remnant of the Cherokee Indians. 

Father Schacht does not appear to have gone to 
Knoxville or Jonesborough, for he does not mention 
them by name, while his route lay rather in another 
direction. However, he tells us that, with the exception 
of an Italian and a Frenchman, all the Catholics he 
met eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity of 
approaching the sacraments. He rode seven hundred 
miles on the tour, and reached home shortly before 
Easter, which fell that year on the twenty-third day 
of April.“ 

Meanwhile, Bishop Miles decided to convert the old 


17 Advocate, June 24, 1848. The article is dated June 15, and signed 
“Verax,’ a pseudonym under which Father Schacht often wrote. 


430 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Holy Rosary Cathedral, which faced north on Gay 
Street, into a hospital and girls’ orphan asylum. This 
task was entrusted to Father Schacht immediately 
after his return from the missionary journey just out- 
lined. The project met with a warm welcome from 
all the city. “Above all,” says Father Schacht, “my 
Irishmen proved again, what needed no longer any 
proof, that they are always by the side of their priest 
in works of benevolence and charity. It was not so 
much the labor itself, but the spirit in which they 
performed it, that cheered me most.” In an astonish- 
ingly short time both institutions were in operation. 
They were placed under the charge of the Sisters of 
Charity, and effected much good in Nashville— 
especially among the poorer and middle classes.*° 

In the remodeling of the proto-cathedral for a 
hospital the new front given the structure made it face 
towards the east. Its number was then 63 North 
High Street. Simultaneously with this renovation 
Father Schacht either erected a frame cottage on the 
same plot of ground for the sisters in charge, or con- 
verted the original wooden church into a home for 
them. Very likely the smaller orphans at least were 
domiciled in this with their pious guardians.” 

Among the matters in which Bishop Miles took a 
keen interest at this time was the appointment of 
Doctor Spalding as coadjutor of Louisville. It had 

18 4dvocate of April 22, 1848; June 24, 1848; and January 20, 1849 
(this letter is also signed “Verax,” and is dated January 12); and the 
Nashville Republican Banner, January 5, 1849. 

19 The Nashville Directory (by John P. Campbell), 1853-1854; 1855- 
1856; 1857. The stretch of High Street towards which these buildings 
fronted is now called “Park.” The land on which they stood forms a 


part of the state-capitol grounds, and is no longer occupied by any 
structures except the state-house. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 431 


been understood that the learned divine had received the 
appointment, but opposition on the part of some caused 
it to be held in abeyance. Uneasy because of the delay, 


our Nashville prelate wrote to Bishop Purcell: 

What has become of Dr. Spalding? I had received information 
from him sometime since that the Coadjutorship of Louisville has 
been conferred on him, and that he was going to Cincinnati to 
make a retreat in order to decide whether he would accept or not. 
I have not had a word from him directly or indirectly for a month, 
and fear some mistake has been made as to the nomination. Could 
you give me any information on the subject??? 


A little later, he took a journey to the east, perhaps 
as much in the interest of his friend as in that of his 
own diocese. From Baltimore he wrote to Doctor 
Spalding to tell him how kindly he was received by 
Archbishop Eccleston who immediately introduced 
the question of the Louisville coadjutorship, and told 
him that Bishop Flaget had now agreed to leave the 
matter to the metropolitan and Bishop F. P. Kenrick 
of Philadelphia. Then he adds: 


It is now pretty well understood here that the Bulls for your 
nomination have, through misrepresentation, either not been 
issued, or have been suppressed, and consequently the matter stands 
in statu quo, and will remain so till the Archbishop’s letter reaches 
Rome—which, I trust, will put a final quietus to this disgraceful 
affair. ... I need not exhort you to patience, nor tell you how 
solicitous I feel in your regard; but I may say that all your 
friends are doubly so since the injustice and ill treatment you 
have suffered have come to their knowledge. I hope your health 
will have been much improved ere this reaches you; and it is my 
sincerest wish that Kentucky may be represented in our next 
Provincial Council by one of her own sons, even if her Foreign 
Ally should be doomed to immoderate regret in consequence”! 


Four months later, the subject of our narrative had 


20 Notre Dame Archives. Letter dated March 30, 1848. 
21 Baltimore Archives, Case 35,18. Letter dated May 23, 1848. 


432 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the satisfaction of assisting at the consecration of 
Doctor Spalding in the cathedral of Louisville. Ven- 
erable Bishop Flaget performed the ceremony on 
September 10, 1848. Bishop F. P. Kenrick was the 
other assistant, while Archbishop Peter R. Kenrick 
of Saint Louis preached the sermon.” 'The ceremonies 
have always been considered among the most interesting 
ever witnessed in Kentucky. 

January 14, 1849, the Father of the Church in Ten- 
nessee consecrated Father Maurice De St. Palais 
bishop of Vincennes in the old French town from which 
the see took its name. He and Doctor Spalding were 
the only prelates who had the courage to face the awful 
weather in order to be present at this ceremony. 
Spalding, therefore, not only acted as assistant conse- 
crator, but also preached, the other assistant being the 
Rev. Hippolytus Dupontavice. The Vincennes cor- 
respondent of the Advocate thanks Bishops Miles and 
Spalding for heroicly braving the tempestuous time, 
states that the ceremony “was admirably performed by 
the very dignified Consecrator,’ and thus closes his 
account of the event: “The venerable Consecrator must 
indeed have ranked that day among the happiest of 
his life. Our Bishop is joined by his flock in wishing 
him ad multos annos.” *° 

The Saint John’s Hospital and Orphan Asylum had 
been put in operation the previous October. Prior to 
starting for Vincennes, the bishop had decided to hold 
a supper for the liquidation of the debt which still 
remained on the establishment. This took place in 
Masonic Hall, January 9, 1849, during the holy man’s 


22 Advocate, September 16, 1848. 
23 Advocate, January 27, 1849, 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 433 


absence. JT‘ather Schacht, who managed the affair, 
writes of it: “If our good Bishop had been at home, he 
would have been agreeably convinced that his labors 
here have not been in vain. No doubt he never 
expected, ten years ago, that such a change would take 
place in Nashville.” Catholicity, he proceeds to say, 
is making great strides in the city. On All Saints’ 
Day one hundred and twenty-four persons received 
holy communion, while at least two hundred approached 
the sacraments at Christmas. In Memphis also, where 
the bishop had sent him to assist the Germans the week 
before advent, he was “surprised and delighted” at the 
rapid progress of the true religion, no less than at the 
respect which he found the Church to enjoy in the pros- 
perous town. About affairs there he also writes: 

Much credit is due to the zeal and talents of the Dominican 
Fathers of Memphis. Through their endeavors, under God, the 
Church is taking a stand worthy of herself, and practical religion 
is decidedly on the increase; for the good example of religious 
orders has always a good effect on the congregation. At early 
mass on Sundays the church was nearly filled, and entirely so at 
high mass. Many of the attendants were Protestants, but their 
religious demeanor proved at once that they came to learn, and not 
to cavil. Indeed, the church appeared far too small to accommodate 
the people.*4 

Hardly had Bishop Miles returned from Indiana, 
when he was obliged to start for Saint Louis that he 
might be present at the consecration of Father James 
O. Van De Velde, S.J., as the second bishop of Chicago. 
This event took place in the Church of Saint Francis 
Xavier, attached to Saint Louis University, February 
11, 1849. The Most Rev. R. P. Kenrick performed 
the ceremony, in which he was assisted by Bishops 


24 Advocate, January 20, 1849, as in note 18. 
29 


434 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Miles and Loras. Doctor Spalding preached for the 
occasion.~” Scarcely had he settled down to his work 
again, when the tireless prelate received notification 
of the seventh provincial council of Baltimore which 
was to convene in early May. 

To Bishop Purcell he wrote, April 9, 1849, that he 
hoped to leave Nashville on the sixteenth, and to be in 
Cincinnati on the following Friday or Saturday, and 
that he would stay over Sunday in that city. “I must 
then [he continues] allow myself a week to visit my 
brethren and old parishioners about Somerset and 
Zanesville. After which I shall, I hope, be able to 
meet you at Wheeling on the Wednesday following.” *® 
That he carried out this design is evident from the 
fact that he gave confirmation at the church of the 
Jesuit Fathers in Cincinnati on Sunday, April 22.77 
The vote of the council in favor of a definition of the 
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception pleased his 
piety, while its petition for the creation of three arch- 
dioceses, the erection of several new sees, and the 
establishment of two vicariates apostolic gladdened his 
soul as a further proof of the Church’s growth.” 

But his frequent absences in order to gratify friends 
in the hierarchy by his presence at their consecrations 
caused the man of God to hurry home, where affairs 
called for his attention. The Catholic Advocate of 
June 2, 1849, shows that he had passed through 

25 Advocate, February 24, 1849. Telegraph, March 1, 1849. 

26 Notre Dame Archives. 

27 Telegraph, April 26, 1849. 

28 At the request of this council New York, Cincinnati, and New Or- 
leans were made archbishoprics; the dioceses of Saint Paul, Savannah, and 


Wheeling were erected; and the vicariates apostolic of New Mexico and 
the Territory East of the Rocky Mountains were established. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 435 


Louisville before it went to press. Soon after he 
reached Nashville, the city was in the throes of an 
epidemic of cholera, the ravages of which rent his tender 
heart as well as gave him a busy summer.” Memphis 
was still more sorely afflicted; for there smallpox com- 
bined with cholera to bring gloom to all the town. One 
of the great sorrows of the bishop’s life was the loss, in 
this double epidemic, of a saintly, useful, and zealous 
priest in whose formation he had had a part, Father J. 
H. Clarkson, pastor of Saint Peter’s, who died on 
August 25, 1849. Although a scholarly man, the 
Friar Preacher clothed his attainments with an admi- 
rable humility, just as he expressed choice thoughts in 
the simplest English. The Memphis Daily Eagle of 
August 29, 1849, says of him: 


Rev. Mr. Clarkson was a member of the Order of St. Dominic, 
but for some time past he had been associated in the pastoral charge 
of the Catholic Church of this city. He was unwearying in his 
ministrations, and was greatly beloved by the members of his 
Church. During the prevalence of the late epidemic, he was con- 
stant in attendance upon the poor and suffering. At their bedsides, 
night and day, he stood to speak the promise of a better world; 
to minister to the minds and hearts of the diseased the healing 
and purifying lessons and inspirations of a Christian faith; and, 
in that spirit of religion which is humanity ennobled by the loftiest 
convictions of duty and the holiest impulses of love, to apply 
every remedy, and to perform every ministration, no matter how 
humble or menial, which suffering might crave to have or charity 
prompt to offer. 

His devoted labors brought on the attack under which he passed 
from earth, and closed the tasks of the Christian missionary in 


29 The History of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas (p. 19) 
says the epidemic of cholera was in 1848. Miss McGill (The Sisters of 
Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, p. 115), doubtless following the above 
book, makes the same statement. But the histories of Nashville and the 
cathedral records show that it was in 1849. 


436 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the glories of the martyr. What his labors may have accomplished 
we know not; but we do know that the martyr of charity leaves 
a noble memory in the quiet beauty of a good man’s life. 


This eulogy is all the more striking because evidently 
from the hand of the non-Catholic editor of a secular 
paper; and it thus shows the general esteem, approach- 
ing veneration, in which the holy priest was held. 
Another tribute appeared in the Catholic Telegraph 


of September 13, 1849. Here we read: 

The field of his labors up to the time of his coming to 
Memphis—two years since—were portions of Ohio and Kentucky, 
where he left a name which will long be cherished and revered. 
He was of a mild and placid disposition, and possessed good 
practical sense and a sound judgment. His talents, without 
being brilliant or showy, were solid and useful. But his leading 
trait of character was benevolence. He was totally regardless of 
self when his neighbor’s good, either temporal or spiritual, called 
for his exertion. This he gave cheerfully, and at any cost of 
personal sacrifice, or of means within his power. 

His sickness was occasioned in a great measure by exposure 
and overexertion. For six months our city had been given up to 
the ravages of pestilence. The Rev. Father Clarkson was fore- 
most in encountering the destroyer—rescuing the victims when it 
was possible by medical prescriptions, and, when not, assuaging 
their pains with his personal attentions and soothing commisera- 
tien, and with hope-inspiring words. His death has thrown a 
gloom over our community. The outburst of grief, spontaneous 
and general, as well among Protestants as among Catholics, with 
which the intelligence of his demise was received, was but the 
natural tribute of the heart to known excellence and worth. 

The warning was sudden, and the event followed quick upon 
the warning. But still there was ample time. When his whole 
life had been a continual preparation for death, there was little 
left to be done in those last moments. Fortified with the holy 
sacraments of religion, and with the benediction of his Order, he 
met his fate with that confidence and resignation, and with that 
calmness and composure, which the assurance of a good conscience 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 437 


and the retrospect of a well-spent life always produce.®° 

The Telegraph's tribute is not signed. But the 
internal evidence of style, thought, and spirit, as well 
as the external evidence of intimate knowledge and 
close friendship, suggests that its author was none other 
than Bishop Miles himself. Quite likely he went to 
Memphis after his friend’s death, and wrote to the 
Cincinnati paper from there. In any event, true man 
of God that he was, Father Clarkson could scarcely 
have asked greater praise from either journal. He 
was the first priest to die in Memphis. Like many of 
his successors in the same city, he was a martyr to his 
zeal and charity. 

There is another fact regarding this holy priest which 
should be put on record, and no longer left to the mercy 
of tradition. At first, he was buried in the yard which 
lay at the side and rear of the original church. Some 
twelve or fifteen years later, when his body was taken 
up that it might be laid to rest beneath the sanctuary 
of the new Saint Peter’s, it was found to be intact. 

30 Father Clarkson was the son of James Henry and Elizabeth (Wor- 
land) Clarkson, was born in Washington County, Kentucky, in 1812, and 
was educated partly at Saint Mary’s College, and partly at Saint Rose’s. 
He received the habit of Saint Dominic at the latter place on August 2, 
1829, and made his profession on August 5, 1830. There he made his 
higher studies. He received the tonsure from Bishop Fenwick in Cin- 
cinnati, Sunday, October 16, 1831, and the minor orders two days later. 
He was ordained priest by Bishop Flaget or Bishop Chabrat in the spring 
of 1835, his first baptismal record at Saint Rose’s bearing the date of 
May 17 that year. In May, 1837, he was sent to Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio, 
to succeed Bishop Miles as prior, remaining there and on the Ohio missions 
until the provincial chapter in the fall of 1847, by which he was sent to 
Memphis. He was a splendid preacher, had a logical mind, and gave much 
time to the explanation of Catholic doctrine. Some times it has been said 
that he died of smallpox, and at others that cholera brought on his 


death. The time of the year and other circumstances indicate that it 
was due to the latter disease. 


438 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


God’s servant appeared to be asleep rather than dead. 
His flesh was as pliable and natural as in life.”* 

But here we must retrace our steps a little in order 
to gather up a few threads of our narrative which are 
necessary for a proper perspective of the picture. 
Saintly Father Louis Hoste, the vicar general, had 
lived in Nashville from the time of his arrival from 
France, in 1841. One of his cares there had been the 
few French Catholics of the city. At first, he lived 
with the bishop. Later he and Father Montgomery 
seem to have occupied another house, possibly that 
which still stands at the side of Saint Mary’s of the 
Seven Dolors, and which was the cathedral rectory. 
After the coming of Father Orengo, Father Schacht 
became pastor of the cathedral. Father Hoste, doubt- 
less at his own request, went to reside at Saint 
Michael’s, near ‘Turnersville, Robertson County, where 
he started a school and a male orphan asylum of which 
we shall speak later. 

Father Orengo became an itinerant missionary for 
central Tennessee, who saw little of his home with the 
bishop at Nashville. Father Jacquet was sent to 
Chattanooga, whence he looked after all the eastern 
part of the state until the arrival of the Rev. Edmund 
Etschmann, O.S.F., sometime in 1849. This worthy 
son of Saint Francis was stationed at Wartburg, 
Morgan County, whose German colony Doctor Miles 
turned over to the care of the Franciscans. Under 
the same charge came Kingston, Roane County, and 

31 Fathers John A. Bokel, James V. Edelen, and Sydney A. Clarkson 
(a younger brother) used often to speak of having witnessed this fact. 
Several old people of Memphis spoke of it to the writer some years ago. 


The tradition of it is still strong in that city and in Saint Joseph’s 
Province. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 439 


Tellico Plains, Monroe County. Far-off Jonesborough 
was then attended from Nashville. But like his prede- 
cessor, the Rev. William Howard, Father Etschmann 
received all too scant support, and was recalled by his 
superiors late in 1850 or early in 1851. During the two 
years that he labored in the diocese he effected much 
good, for he was a zealous priest of blameless life.” 

In the midst of these changes for the advancement 
of religion, the heart of ‘Tennessee’s apostle was glad- 
dened again by the arrival of the Rev. Henry Vincent 
Brown, a convert priest whom he had himself received 
into the Church, and sent to Rome for his studies. 
Father Brown was ordained by the Most Rev. John 
MacHale, archbishop of ‘Tuam, Ireland, in the chapel 
of the College of the Propaganda, on Pentecost Sunday, 
June 11, 1848, and arrived in Nashville late in the 
year, or early in 1849. It was a happy day for the 
Church there, for the history of his labors in the state 
is inseparable from that of the diocese. He was 
stationed in the episcopal city, but his toils were prin- 
cipally on the missions.*° 

32 Catholic Almanac, 1847, p. 134; 1848, p. 220; 1849, pp. 115-116; 1850, 
p. 133; 1851, p. 131. The Almanac places Father Etschmann at Saint 
John’s, Cincinnati, from 1847 until he went to Tennessee, and again from 
the time he left the Diocese of Nashville until 1856. From that time 
to 1862 or 1863 he was at Saint Boniface’s, Louisville, Kentucky, whence 
he seems to have returned to Europe. He died in Austrian Tyrol, May 21, 
1890. 

33 Father Brown was born about 1816. His parents were Presbyterians. 
About 1839, he was engaged as teacher of art at Saint Catherine’s 
Academy, near Springfield, Kentucky. While there, Father Jarboe con- 
verted him, but he was baptized by Bishop Miles at Saint Rose’s, April 
5, 1840. Then he studied at Saint Joseph’s College, Bardstown, whence 


he went to Rome in 1844 or 1845. His first baptism at Nashville is dated 
February 25, 1849. 


440 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Among the nominations made by the council held 
at Baltimore was that of Father Charles Pius Mont- 
gomery, a younger brother of Father Samuel in 
Nashville, and like him a Friar Preacher. He declined 
the honor. When Archbishop Eccleston wrote to 
Bishop Miles to acquaint him of this fact, and to ask for 


suggestions, the subject of our narrative replied: 
Nashville, April 8, 1850. 
Most Rev. Archbishop :— 

I regret very much to learn from your late favour that Rev. 
Mr. Montgomery persists in his refusal of the appointment to the 
See of Monterey, as I know him to be well fitted for that office. 
With regard to the Rev. Mr. Grace, although a very worthy and 
efficient clergyman, I think he is too young, and has not been in 
orders long enough.*+ This is the only objection that could be 
made against him. 

At your request, I will take the liberty to propose the names of 
Very Rev. Joseph Alemany, O.P., who stands second on the list 
for Santa Fe, and who is sufficiently known for his piety and 
learning to render any recommendation on my part unnecessary; 
and the Rev. James M. Lancaster, whom I have known from his 
childhood, and whom I heartily recommend as one well worthy 
of the mitre. I am aware that some objections have been made 
against Mr. Lancaster; but I have never heard of any that, in my 
estimation, ought to stand in his way on this occasion. I have 
never heard the most distant hint against his moral character, 
and know him to be a good, zealous clergyman, and highly 
esteemed by the congregation he has had charge of. 

Allow me, Most Rev. Archbishop, to thank you for the kindness 
expressed in your letter, and to hope that my future conduct may 
deserve a continuation of the same, whilst I remain with senti- 


34 This was Father Grace of Memphis. He had studied and was or- 
dained abroad, returning to this country late in 1844, or in the early 
days of 1845. The United States Catholic Miscellany of August 24, 1850, 
together with this letter, indicates that his name was the second on the 
council’s list for Monterey. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 44] 


ments of the highest regard and esteem, 
Your most obedient servant, 
T Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville.*° 


Whenthe Holy See raised Saint Louis to the rank 
of an archbishopric, July 20, 1847, it was decided to 
defer the appointment of its suffragan dioceses until 
the American hierarchy should make known their wish 
in the matter at the next provincial council to he held 
at Baitimore. Although, doubtless because of long- 
standing associations, Bishop Miles would have pre- 
ferred that Nashville should be associated with the 
Province of Cincinnati for the establishment of which 
the council petitioned, he was too humble a man to 
oppose the wishes of the conciliar fathers. Accord- 
ingly, by a letter of the Propaganda dated August 9, 
1850, Tennessee was severed from Baltimore, and 
annexed to Saint Louis.*° 


35 Baltimore Archives, Case 25, M 8. Father Alemany, S.T.Lr., was 
born in Vich, Spain, July 13,-1814. He entered the Order of Saint 
Dominic in his native country when fifteen years of age; but on the 
suppression of the religious orders in Spain (1835), he went to Viterbo, 
Italy, where he was raised to the priesthood on March 27, 1837, and ob- 
tained the degree of Lector of Theology in 1840. Shortly afterwards, 
he came to Ohio. In 1842, he was sent to Nashville, and to Memphis 
in 1845, in both of which places he left a sacred memory. In 1847, he 
was made master of novices in Kentucky, and became provincial in 1849. 
While in Rome, he was appointed bishop of Monterey (May 31, 1850), 
and was consecrated there, June 30, 1850. On the erection of the Arch- 
diocese of San Francisco, he became its metropolitan (July 29, 1853). 
He resigned in December, 1884, returned to Spain, and died at Valencia, 
April 14, 1888. He was one of our most saintly and best beloved prelates. 

36 HERNAEZ, Coleccion de Bulas, Breves, etc., II, 787-788; Concilia Bal- 
timort, pp. 281, 287-289. These documents show the error of Shea who 
writes (History of the Church, IV, 36): “When the authorities in Rome 
at last recognized the consequences of their action, Pope Pius IX., on the 
8th day of October, 1847, made St. Louis a metropolitan see, with Du- 
buque, Nashville, Chicago, and Milwaukee as suffragans.’’ Doctor Shea 
had a decided Gallican tendency, and overlooked few opportunities of 


442 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Three other acts of the Holy See in agreement with 
the requests of the seventh provincial council of 
Baltimore were the erection of the Diocese of Wheeling, 
the transfer thither of Bishop Richard V. Whelan, and 
the appointment of the Rev. John McGill of Kentucky 
as his successor at Richmond. ‘The new appointee was 
a close friend and admirer of the Father of the Church 
in Tennessee. When therefore Father McGill was 
consecrated bishop of Richmond by the metropolitan 
of Saint Louis, Doctors Miles and St. Palais acted as 
assistants. The event took place in Saint Joseph’s 
Church, Bardstown, the former cathedral, November 
10, 1850. Bishop Spalding delivered an _ eloquent 
sermon.” It is noteworthy that this was the last 
episcopal consecration in that historic edifice, as well 
as one of the most striking ceremonies that ever occurred 
there. 

With the exception of that of the Right Rev. 
Amadeus Rappe of Cleveland which took place in 
Cincinnati, October 10, 1847, and at which only Bishops 
Purcell and Whelan were present, the subject of our 
narrative had not only attended, but also participated 
in, every episcopal consecration in the near west from 
the time of his elevation to the hierarchy, twelve years 
before. His big heart and broad mind urged him to 
undergo every sacrifice that he might gratify his 
equals. Previous engagements and the Nashville 
cathedral, which was nearing dedication, rendered it 
next to impossible for him to be at Bishop Rappe’s 
consecration; yet, had he known that so few would 
censuring Rome, even when there was clear evidence of a desire to please 


our hierarchy. 


37 Telegraph, November 30, 1850. 


PROGRESS SLOW, BUT STEADY 443 


attend it, one can not doubt that he would have found 
a way of gracing the occasion with his ever welcomed 
presence. 

Ill health combined with much that called for his 
attention at home to keep him from the consecration 
of Bishop John B. Lamy as vicar apostolic of Santa Fe, 
in Cincinnati, November 24, 1850. ‘The holy prelate 
had spent nearly the whole year in travel, on horseback 
and otherwise, through his diocese, which sapped his 
strength even to the point of danger. Worry and extra 
toil caused by another outbreak of cholera in the early 
summer contributed to the same effect. From Bishop 
McGill’s consecration he returned to Nashville a sick 
man. In a letter of date December 27, 1850, Father 


H. V. Brown tells Mark Frenaye of Philadelphia: 


At the request of Bishop Miles I write to inform you that he 
duly received the certificate of Bank deposit for $103.02 for- 
warded to him by you. Our venerable Bishop has been seriously 
indisposed for some three weeks. He is now a little better, but 
cannot yet sit up, and requires constant attention day and night. 
His physician does not name his complaint, but he has a violent 
cough, frequent fever and swollen limbs.®* 


Although the progress of the period was slow, on 
the whole it was steady and solid. Those acquainted 
with the conditions regarded it as nothing short of 
extraordinary. Indeed, they marvelled not that the 
zealous prelate failed to effect more, but that he was 
able to accomplish so much. 


38 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, March, 1903 
(XT Vien tlo,)% 


CHAPTER XIX 
FAIRER GROWTH 


THE union of the Catholic Advocate with the 
Catholic Telegraph, in the latter half of 1849, was 
unfortunate for the history of the Diocese of Nashville. 
It practically took away from Bishop Miles the paper 
which he had in a large measure used as his official 
organ. Between the clergy of Ohio and the clergy of 
Tennessee naturally there was not that community 
of spirit, general acquaintance, or warmth of friendship 
which existed between the priests of Kentucky and the 
priests of Tennessee. The student can not but notice 
that, immediately after this change, communications 
on the affairs of the Diocese of Nashville became much 
-more meager, as well as far less frequent, than they had 
been before. 

Possibly the columns of the Telegraph were not so 
open for news items from the struggling little see 
which lay farther to the south as had been those of 
the Advocate, which was more in sympathy with its 
hardships from the fact that it had been taken from 
Bardstown, and was a closer neighbor. However this 
may be, distance from Cincinnati and Nashville’s 
connection with Saint Louis, one can but believe, cer- 
tainly had their part in this unfortunate circumstance. 
The matter is aggravated still more in that Archbishop 
P. R. Kenrick preserved practically no records. Hap- 
pily, however, a few documents have survived the 

444 


FAIRER GROWTH 445 


ravages of time and neglect which, especially when taken 
in connection with those already laid before the reader, 
afford a fair idea of the life and labors of Tennessee’s 
first chief pastor during the last decade of his govern- 
ment. 

We left the apostolic man, at the close of the last 
chapter, in another serious spell of sickness brought on 
by unremitting labor and exposure. Although he 
possessed a splendid vitality and power of recuperation, 
his strength had been so overtaxed that the recovery 
was slow. Weakness rendered it impossible for him to 
attend the consecration of Father John B. Miége, S. J., 
as vicar apostolic of Kansas and the Indian Territory, 
on March 25, 1851. However, that year opened with 
an event which must have brought no little joy to our 
apostle’s fatherly heart. He had long desired, even 
sought, to obtain for his diocese the services of the 
Dominican Sisters whom he had helped to establish. 
These were then under the jurisdiction of the Domin- 
ican provincial. When, therefore, Father M. A. 
O’Brien, the first priest whom he had ordained, was 
elected to that position, October 30, 1850, Bishop 
Miles at once renewed his efforts to this end; for he 
felt that a zealous friend for whom he had done so much 
would leave nothing untried in order to grant his 
petition." 

It happened as he had prayed. Indeed, pursuant to 
his swift way of doing things, Father O’Brien sent 
the sisters before preparations were made for their 
reception. Doubtless it was as much to divide the honor 
of initiating the work between the two little commu- 
nities, as to spare either the entire burden, that the 


1An American Apostle, pp. 39, 54, and passim. 


446 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


provincial selected three members of Saint Catherine’s, 
Springfield, Kentucky, and an equal number from 
Saint Mary’s, Somerset, Ohio. Those from Kentucky 
were Sisters Lucy Harper, Ann Simpson, and Vin- 
centia Fitzpatrick; those from Ohio, Sisters Emily 
Thorpe, Magdalen Clark, and Catherine McCormack. 

This little band of workers, escorted by Father 
Francis Cubero, travelled down the Ohio and the 
Mississippi from Louisville to Memphis, where they 
arrived between one and two o’clock on the morning of 
January 1, 1851. As they had to leave the boat, Father 
Cubero took them directly to Saint Peter’s. Father 
Grace had just retired after a late sick-call; but he 
arose at once to welcome them. Having no place in 
which he could put them to sleep, he entertained them in 
the parlor the rest of the night, and after mass and 
breakfast took them to a Mrs. McKeon’s, who showed 
them every hospitality for about two weeks, or until 
they could be settled in their new home.* 

Prior to the arrival of the sisters, Father Grace had 
purchased what was then known as the “Coe Place” 
from its former owner and occupant, the Hon. L. H. 
Coe. ‘The house, a neat frame structure two stories 
high, had eight small rooms, besides the garret, stood 
somewhat beyond the city limits, and was pleasantly 
situated back from the highway in a large yard of 
primeval forest trees. ‘There early in February, 1851, 
began the school which soon developed into the present 
widely-known Saint Agnes’ Academy. At first, the 
garret was used for a chapel. But in the following 
year, when the bishop and Father Grace entrusted the 


2 This lady was probably the wife of Patrick or William McKeon, two 
of Memphis’ earliest Catholics. 


FAIRER GROWTH 447 


Catholic orphans of Memphis to the sisters, a new 
building was added, in which a room on the second story 
was set apart for an oratory. Indeed, the growth of 
this schoo! was so rapid that by 1855 it became nec- 
essary to send the orphans to a place which Father 
Grace had purchased, about five miles outside the city, 
with the intention of starting a college for boys. It 
was long known as “Gracewood Farm;” and here the 
orphans remained until after Bishop Miles’ death.” 
Unfortunately, the affairs of Saint Mary’s Academy 
at Nashville took a less happy turn at this juncture. 
After his appointment as pastor of the cathedral, 
Father Ivo Schacht, or “Scatt” as he was universally 
called, was given too much authority by good Bishop 
Miles. Father Schacht was a capable man, an extraor- 
dinary linguist, and a zealous, hard-working priest. 
These qualities, there can be no doubt, won for him 
the unreserved confidence of his ordinary, who had not 
yet learned that his one failing was an inflexible deter- 
mination to have his own way, regardless of costs. 
In addition to the pastorship of the cathedral, he was 
placed in charge of the school, and appointed spiritual 
director of the sisters. ‘Trouble was not slow to follow. 
Among the causes of the misunderstanding are said 
3 Saint Agnes’ Annals (Mss.); Minocur, Pages from a Hundred Years 
of Dominican History, pp. 84 ff. Gracewood Farm contained one hundred 
and ten acres, and was bought from John Park and Andrew Henderson 
in 1854 for a college which Bishop Miles wished the fathers to start 
near Memphis. But they were unable to begin the work before the Civil 
War. Father William D. O’Carroll, who became provincial in 1865, 
sold the property. 
Sister Catherine McCormack died at Saint Agnes’, August 8, 1851, 
being the first nun to die in Tennessee. Sisters Monica Conlan, Vincent 


Nicolas, and Mary Pius Fitzpatrick were added to the staff of the school 
in 1852. 


448 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


to have been a too frequent change of teachers and a 
desire that the sisters should sing in the cathedral choir.* 
Possibly this is in part true, although documents laid 
before the reader indicate that there was little difficulty 
in finding at Nashville those who were ever ready to 
supply this latter need for church services. 

Another reason given for the friction is the wish of 
Bishop Miles to have a purely diocesan community free 
from outside authority.” There may also be some truth 
in this statement, especially in the after-development 
of affairs; for the Sisters of Mercy, founded along these 
lines, seem to have engendered in the minds of more than 
one bishop a disposition to establish such bodies of 
religious women. Archbishop Hughes had already 
started one with some of the Sisters of Charity of 
Emmitsburg who were in the Diocese of New York, 
while Archbishop Purcell was taking a similar step 
for Cincinnati. 

Whatever the origin of the differences, Father 
Schacht’s hand is clearly visible behind the project 
which all too soon took effect in Nashville. Doubtless 
the conception was entirely his, and he took advantage 
of the bishop’s illness that he might bring his plan to 
execution. Evidently also some of the sisters readily 
espoused his cause. Bishop Miles’ well-known char- 
acter and spirit of charity and thoughtfulness for 
others—apart from his religious training, principles, 
and experience—, it seems almost needless to say, would 
have made him the last person in the world to think of 
dividing a community for his own sake, had not the 

4 History of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, pp. 22 ff; 


McGiLL, The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, p. 116. 
9 Ibid. 


FAIRER GROWTH 449 


strongest influence been brought to bear upon him while 
in a state of prolonged infirmity in which he largely 
depended upon the zeal and judgment of Father 
Schacht. Some others seem to have also urged Father 
Schacht’s idea. 

Mother Catherine Spalding of Nazareth finally went 
to see the bishop about the difficulty. That two persons 
of such equipoise could not come to an agreement is 
proof that matters had then arrived at a pass in which 
the best, if not the only reasonable, solution of the 
trouble lay in the withdrawal of some of the sisters at 
Nashville from the mother-house, and the establishment 
of a distinct and independent community. This was 
determined upon at the time; for six members of Saint 
Mary’s Academy and Saint John’s Hospital and 
Orphan Asylum, apparently under the leadership of 
Father Schacht and Sister Xavier Ross, had openly 
pronounced themselves in favor of such a step.° In 
the first part of a letter to Bishop Spalding, when the 
plan had matured, Father Schacht rather hides behind 
his ecclesiastical superior; but towards the end he dis- 
closes clearly enough who had brought it about. Here 
he writes: 


Nashville, June 9th, 1851. 
Right Rev. and dear Friend :— 

Nothing would give us more pleasure than to welcome your 
Lordship to Nashville on your return from the Springs. Boats 
are coming up from Smithland nearly every day. Besides, the 
digression would amount to nothing as to time. So, Right Rev. 
Friend, permit me to hope you will favour us thus far. The 
Bishop desires that the house of Nazareth would be kind enough 
to furnish him with five or six Sisters to commence a Novitiate 
with of our own. Our peculiar position, the good of Religion, and 


6 Sisters of Leavenworth as in note 4, p. 23. 


30 


450 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


many other circumstances render this an imperative duty on our 
part. I consider a refusal almost certain, because I could not 
take any other but such as I would name myself. Moreover, 
the thing is to be done.” I want to do things amicably, and find 
myself without such counsel as I need. Mother Frances most 
pressingly invites you too. And all will feel under lasting obli- 
gations to you, Right Rev. Friend. 
In anxious expectation, Yours in Christ. 


I. Schacht.® 
Whether Bishop Spalding went to Nashville on this 
invitation we did not discover. Be that as it may, Father 
Schacht wrote to him again on November 5, 1851, a 
letter which shows how keenly he felt the accusations 
made against him for his actions in the matter, as well 
as abounds in countercharges. ‘The document is too 
violent for publication. Suffice it to say that, we are 
convinced, his charges are grossly exaggerated, and 
that the letter is almost proof positive that the scheme 
of separation originated with him, and that Se 
Xavier Ross took a leading part in bringing it to pass.” 


7 The italics are Father Schacht’s. 

8 Louisville Archives (photostat copy in those of Saint Joseph’s Prov- 
ince). Mother Frances Gardiner, referred to in the letter, did not join 
in Father Schacht’s plan, after all. 

9 Ibid. (photostat copy, ibid.). One of the accusations against which 
Father Schacht is particularly anxious to defend himself in this letter 
is that he had acted as Mother Xavier’s adviser in all that she had done. 
However, the facts that she was superior from 1847 to 1850; that in 
1850 she was superseded by Mother Frances Gardiner; that the break 
came in 1851; that Mother Xavier immediately became the superior of 
the new community, and held the office as long as it remained in Nashville; 
that it looked on Father Schacht as its chief guardian friend; that it 
regarded Bishop Miles as in his right when he consented to the separa- 
tion from Nazareth, but in the wrong when he took action against Father 
Schacht; and that it broke with the Bishop when Father Schacht broke 
with him—all this leaves more than a suspicion in the mind that Father 
Schacht sadly deceived himself when he wrote this letter. See the Cath- 
olic Almanacs from 1848 to 1858, and History of the Sisters of Leaven- 
qorth and McGuu, op. cit., as in note 4. 


FAIRER GROWTH 451 


Doubtless, as in all similar difficulties, there were 
mistakes on both sides. The error of Bishop Miles, 
we may take it for granted, was one of judgment, and 
not of the heart. It is one of the very few which we 
may lay at the holy prelate’s door. Quite probably, 
before it reached his ears, the business had progressed 
so far that, while those who favored a division of the 
community could no longer be happy at Nazareth, the 
only way in which he could save his school was to accede 
to their desire, and he made what he believed to be the 
wisest choice under the circumstances. Possibly again 
it was to make amends for whatever wrong he feared 
might have been committed against the Kentucky insti- 
tution that (September 15, 1851) he deeded to its eccle- 
siastical superior, Father Joseph Hazeltine, a splendid 
piece of land, together with the buildings on it, which he 
had purchased at a bargain five years earlier, and which 
had since been used for educational purposes”. 

The sisters who abided by the decision of their mo- 
ther-house returned to Kentucky after the school year 
of 1850-1851. ‘Those who remained at Nashville were 
Sisters Xavier Ross, Mary Vincent Kearney, Joanna 
Brunner, Ellen Davis, Jane Frances Kennedy, and 
Baptista Kelly. At first, as the academy property had 
been turned over to Father Hazeltine, they all lived in 
the cottage near the hospital, 63 North High Street, 
where they were soon joined by two recruits from 

10 Deed Book XV, pp. 81-82 (Recorder’s Office, Nashville). Deed 
Book IX, pp. 288-289, shows that Bishop Miles bought this property at 
a public auction, September 26, 1843, and received the deed for it, when 
he had finished paying the purchase money, on October 26, 1846. Deed 
Book IX, pp. 432-433, shows that he also deeded property to Father Hazel- 


tine, February 22, 1847. In each case one dollar was the consideration 
paid by Hazeltine. 


452 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Nazareth who had probably been in Nashville before— 
Sisters Pauline Gibson and Dorothy Villeneuve™. 

However, it was not long before the large, beautiful 
home of Doctor William A. Cheatham, which stood at 
42-44 Cedar Street, opposite the cathedral, was secured 
for the teaching sisters and converted into a convent un- 
der the name of Saint Vincent’s Home. Here also were 
Saint Mary’s Academy continued and the orphans 
transferred, as well as a novitiate opened. ‘The hospital 
remained at 63 North High Street, while a free school 
for the poor and such as chose it for the education of 
their children was taught in the spacious basement of 
the cathedral’. Indeed, the new community prospered 
marvellously for a time. Doubtless it would have ren- 
dered the diocese lasting services, had not Father 
Schacht’s unruly spirit and ugly temper intervened. 
But of this we shall speak in a later chapter. 

Bishop Miles’ kindness of heart, no less than his 
charity, uniformly prevented him from cherishing ill 
will towards any one. So it happened in the case of the 
misunderstanding just recorded. We sought in vain 
for a hard or harsh word from him in regard to that 
matter. Contrariwise, we discovered from various 
sources manifestations of sincere friendship, high es- 
teem, and good wishes for Nazareth. Similarly the 
apostolic man was not one who would stop to cry over 
spilt milk. HKeenly sensitive though he was for the good 
of religion, naught seemed to ruffle the even tenor of his 

11 Authorities as in note 4 and the Almanacs from 1852 to 1858. The 
only other Sisters up to this time whose names we have discovered were 
Sister Serena Carney (superior 1845-1847), Sister Frances Gardiner (supe- 
rior 1850-1851), and Sister Margaret Bamber (superior at the hospital 
1849-1851). None of these three joined the new community. 


12 Sisters of Leavenworth, pp. 22 ff; Almanacs, 1852-1858; Nashville 
Directory, 1853-1854, 1855-1856, 1857. 


FAIRER GROWTH 453 


ways, for the consciousness that he did his best, chose 

what he believed to be right, and sought to avoid that 

which he feared might be wrong, enabled him to possess 
his soul in peace. 

Another incident, of slight importance in itself, but 
which is said to have caused the subject of our narrative 
considerable pain, seems to have grown out of the es- 
tablishment of the new community in Nashville. In the 
life of his predecessor, which he was compiling just at 
this juncture, Bishop Spalding states that Father 
Raphael Mufios was sent to Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, 
as prior of the convent that he might restore the disci- 
pline which had become somewhat relaxed through the 
exigencies of missionary life. ‘Tradition tells us that the 
distinguished divine wrote this through pique; and 
that Bishop Miles was not a little chagrined by the as- 
sertion of his friend. Nor is the reason far to seek in 
either case. It was only natural that Doctor Spalding 
should be nettled by the split in a religious body under 
his jurisdiction, for which he felt that the Father of the 
Church in Tennessee was partly responsible; whilst the 
latter could hardly be expected not to resent the impu- 
tation that he had needed to be reformed by one who 
had been so harsh to him as Father Murfios"®. 

However, as his letters show, Bishop Miles did not 
permit this incidental unpleasantness to mar a friend- 
ship which had been long, intimate, and trusting. In- 
deed, the relations between the two prelates were soon 

13 Life of Flaget, p. 288; Fenwick, p. 142. In Fenwick is shown Father 
Maes’ fantastic use of Doctor Spalding’s statement. Possibly it was 
this spleen which occasioned Bishop Spalding’s failure to mention the 
labors of the Dominicans in Kentucky during the epidemic of cholera in 


1833—for which see his Life of Flaget, pp. 275 ff, and note 12 in Chapter 
XI of this book. 


454 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


as near and amicable as ever. Despite his zeal, the de- 
bility induced by the severe spell of sickness seems to 
have rendered the year 1851 the least active since the 
holy man’s elevation to the miter. Still he kept in close 
touch with the affairs of his diocese, which he strove to 
advance in every way. arly in the fall he made a 
journey to Ohio, and officiated at the cathedral in Cin- 
cinnati“. Quite probably his ever-present financial 
straits, which had become still more tightened by the 
loss of the academy property, carried him there, for he 
often sought to borrow money in that city. 

The summons for our first plenary council to assem- 
ble at Baltimore by May 8, 1852, found the man of God 
busy at his work. This was before the close of the 
previous year’. Because of the slow travel at that time 
a number of bishops in the west arranged to make a 
part of the journey together, which would insure them 
a pleasant companionship, no less than afford them an 
opportunity of discussing the needs of the American 
Church before the council should meet. Bishop Spald- 
ing invited the subject of our narrative to join them at 
Louisville, and received in response a letter dated 
March 30, 1852, in which the chief pastor of Tennessee 
tells him: 

“IT am happy to acknowledge your late kind favour, 
and will do myself the pleasure of accepting your invi- 
tation to join you and the other distinguished charac- 
ters that are to form our company to Baltimore. I pro- 
pose to leave home as soon as possible after the second 
Sunday after EKaster—by water, if we have enough, or 

14 Telegraph, September 20, 1851. 


15 The Acta et Decreta of this council show that Archbishop F. P. Ken- 
rick sent out the letter of convocation on November 21, 1851. 


FAIRER GROWTH 455 


by stage, as the case may be’’.” Then he makes a few 


good-natured references to the talk in Kentucky about 
the Saint Mary’s Academy affair, and closes his letter 
with the statement: “Every thing is going on well 
here, except money matters which are rather slim as far 
as I am concerned. Many compliments, and all sorts of 
blessings.” ‘The Catholic Telegraph of Saturday, May 
8, 1852, shows that the hierarchical company passed 
through Cincinnati that week, which gave them barely 
time to reach Baltimore for the opening of the council. 

At this assemblage our zealous prelate had another 
convincing proof of the growth of the Church in his be- 
loved country in the reports brought from every direc- 
tion, and in the petition of the fathers of the council for 
the establishment of no less than nine new sees and one 
vicariate apostolic. His cup of joy would have been 
filled, could he have given a more roseate account of the 
increase of Catholicity in his own charge. Doubtless 
the request for the erection of the Archdiocese of San 
Francisco and the nomination of his friend and former 
colaborer in Tennessee, Bishop Alemany, for its metro- 
politan afforded him a special pleasure. From Balti- 
more he journeyed to New York City, where he dedi- 
cated Saint Ann’s Church, June 1, 1852, in the presence 
of Archbishop Hughes and the bishops of Boston, 
Pittsburgh, and Louisville.” 

On his way back to Nashville, he stopped at his for- 
mer missionary fields of Saint Joseph’s, Somerset, and 

16 Louisville Archives. The second Sunday after Easter fell on April 
25 in that year. 

17 Acta et Decreta Concilii Plenarit........ , Baltimori habiti Anno 1852; 


Freeman’s Journal, June 5, 1852; Memoranda of the Diocese of Boston 
(Mss.), June 1, 1852; Goutpinc, The Churches in New York City, p. 150. 


456 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Zanesville, Ohio, in all of which he administered confir- 
mation, and delivered to the candidates some of those 
simple, beautiful, and instructive sermons in which he 
was an adept. At Saint Joseph’s the ambassador of 
Christ had the satisfaction of finding the new college in 
full operation. It was the first time he had seen it, and 
the thought that his: former ambition had at last been 
realized gave him unbounded joy. The account of his 
welcomed visit says: “The Right Rev. Prelate, though 
declining in years and somewhat worn by arduous la- 
bors, is still in the possession of much vigor, and during 
his stay with us was in the enjoyment of excellent 
health.”’*® 

Strange to say, although it had been the first place 
in the state to loom promisingly from a Catholic point of 
view, and had no doubt been visited more than once 
by a priest since the establishment of the diocese, we 
have found the name of Knoxville in but one document 
(the Almanac of 1854) referring to the Church from 
the days of Father Badin more than forty years past. 
Evidently the faith there had all but died; yet it was 
soon to be resurrected. In fact, the #reeman’s Journal 
of May 26, 1860, reproduces a contribution to the 
Louisville Guardian, which tells of the promise at this 
later time, and says: “Six or eight years ago, not one 
resident Catholic was known to be in Knoxville.” 

Chattanooga, thanks to public works of various kinds, 
had now begun to attract a goodly number, which was a 
source of no little joy to the zealous bishop. Before his 
departure for Baltimore, he had sent Father Brown to 
that city in order to build a church and leave Father 


18 Telegraph, June 26 and July 3, 1852. 


FAIRER GROWTH 457 


Jacquet freer for work among the laborers on the rail- 
roads and in the parts farther towards the east. These 
places seem to have demanded our apostle’s attention 
immediately on his return from the council. Apparent- 
lv he was at or around Chattanooga when Bishop 
Spalding wrote to request his presence at the consecra- 
tion of the cathedral in Louisville, which had been set 
for October 3, 1852. He answered from Nashville, the 
seventh of September: 

I have delayed some time to acknowledge your late kind favour 
in which you invite me to be present at the consecration of your 
new Cathedral, an invitation quite agreeable to my feelings. At 
the time I received your letter Mr. Montgomery was quite ill of a 
fever, and for some time his case was considered dangerous. He 
is now happily recovered, so that, without some accident not antici- 
pated, I shall enjoy your pleasant society and the solemn ceremony 
that is to come off on Rosary Sunday. 

You have laid me under one restriction that will go very hard 
with me. You say in your letter: “Of course you will fail to ex- 
hibit to us the light of your countenance on that auspicious day.” 
This will be a hard task for me, and I hope you will at least allow 
me a small grin from time to time. Otherwise there would be dan- 
ger of an explosion, for the consequences of which you will be 
held responsible. 

Rev. Mr. Brown was present when I read your letter. When I 
announced your invitation to him, he made his best bow, and ex- 
pressed his great regret that he could not come. He is preparing 
to build a church in Chattanooga, and is entirely absorbed in his 
grand undertaking. I propose to leave home on next Sunday; and 
after spending a few days with my pets about St. Rose’s, I will come 
to Louisville, and endeavour to make my retreat before the dedica- 
tion. You know you promised to join me. If this arrangement 
doesn’t suit, please let me know. A letter directed to St. Cathe- 
rine’s, near Springfield, any time next week will find me there. 

Bishop Reynolds has promised to visit me this fall. Of course 
he will be at the consecration, and I shall expect him to accompany 


458 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


me phomers aes May every happiness and blessing be yours. 
I am most faithfully your devoted friend, 
Tt Richard Pius Miles, 
Bishop of Nashville. 


The consecration of the cathedral took place on the 
day prescribed, and has come down in history as one of 
the great Catholic events of Louisville. Two metropol- 
itans and eight bishops from all parts of the country 
graced the occasion with their presence. Bishop Miles, 
there can be no doubt, put his very soul into the signa- 
ture which he affixed to the signed set of resolutions 
sent by this august assemblage to Father John Henry 
(afterwards Cardinal) Newman approving his exposé 
of the apostate priest, Giovanni Achilli, who had writ- 
ten and spoken so villainously of the Church. While 
most tolerant of inculpable error and compassionate to- 
wards the sinner, a true man of God that he was, our 
bishop had little mercy for such reprobate characters as 
Achilli, who he felt deserved only contempt.”° 

Through his ceaseless efforts, in spite of obstacles of 
every sort, religion made continual, though slow, prog- 
ress. In the Catholic Almanac for 1853 he reported 
six churches, two chapels, twenty stations, and five 
thousand faithful served by himself and nine priests. 
Four of the missionaries (Louis Hoste, John M. Jac- 
quet, Ivo Schacht, and H. V. Brown) were secular 
clergymen. ‘The other five belonged to the Order of 
Saint Dominic—Fathers S. L. Montgomery, Thomas 

19 Louisville Archives. 

20 Telegraph, October 9, 1852; Spatpine (J. L.), Life of Archbishop 
M. J. Spalding, p. 148. It is noteworthy that the first Newman fund in 
the United States was opened by the bishops at this meeting for the 


purpose of helping the distinguished English divine to defray the expenses 
of the suit for libel brought against him by the infamous Achilli. 


FAIRER GROWTH 459 


L. Grace, Aloysius Orengo, John Raymond Cleary, and 
John Albert Bokel.** 

Five of the six churches were certainly those of Nash- 
ville, Memphis, Robertson County, Clarksville, and 
Humphreys County, all of which have been mentioned 
more than once. The sixth was likely the log fane 
which Father Schacht built on the Rogan farm about the 
end of 1844, and which appears to have been known la- 
ter as the “Immaculate Conception, Gallatin Tunnel.” 
Father Lorigan, in his article for the Catholic Encyclo- 
pedia, tells us that a church (Saint Mary’s) was erected 
at Jackson in 1849. Quite likely this is true, for such 
a project had been long in contemplation; but as the 
Almanac never speaks of a church there, we are inclined 
to think that this small temple of prayer was one of the 
two designated as chapels in the bishop’s report. ‘The 
other was probably the small wooden affair which either 
Father Jacquet or Father Brown had built on a lot of 
Michael Harrington in Chattanooga, and which Father 
Lorigan says was put up in 1852. Possibly Father 
Brown wished to have it known as a chapel because he 
had already begun preparations for a large and beauti- 
ful Gothic stone church.” 

The twenty stations in the diocese were scattered here 
and there from the boundaries of Mississippi, Alabama, 
and Georgia to that of Kentucky; and from Jones- 
borough in the extreme east to the banks of the great 
Father of Waters. 

One of the holy man’s greatest difficulties still con- 
tinued to be that of procuring a sufficient number of 
priests for the proper care of his widely dispersed flock, 


21 Almanac, 1853, pp. 122-123. 
22 Catholic Encyclopedia, X, 705; Freeman’s Journal, May 28, 1854. 


460 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


and means for a suitable sustenance of the missionaries 
who had come to his aid. However he managed to 
maintain his works of charity and his free schools is 
almost a mystery. When, October 23, 1852, the pre- 
fect of the Propaganda urged that our American hier- 
archy should agree upon some general plan for an 
ecclesiastical living which might be enacted into law, 
Archbishops Purcell and R. P. Kendrick wrote for our 
prelate’s views on the subject.”* To Doctor Purcell he 
replied, March 30, 1853: 

You ask me what I think of the decree of Rome. In my reply 
to the Archbishop of St. Louis asking my opinion on the same sub- 
ject, I told him I did not think I had a right to give any opinion, 
as I was entirely out of the scrape; that I received no assistance 
from any church in my Diocese except from my Cathedral, and 
from this only two or three hundred dollars; and that, had it not 
been for the small pittance I receive annually from the Propaga- 
tion of the Faith, together with a legacy from a deceased brother, 
I should have starved long since.?4 

Thank God, my condition is somewhat better now. I am out of 
debt. Rev. Mr. Schacht has returned from Europe, having pro- 
cured sufficient means to satisfy all demands against my church. 
Some good friend, God forgive him, had so shamefully misrepre- 
sented my condition to the Propagation of the Faith that they had 
for several years put me off with a mere trifle. Mr. Schacht suc- 
ceeded in disabusing them of their error, and they have sent me 
francs 18,000, which, together with what he collected in his own 
country, has made me again even with the world. But my purse 
is in a perfect and frightful state of collapse in consequence. 
N’importe.*® 

23 Acta et Decreta Concilu Plenarii......., Balttmort habiti Anno 1852, 
p. 61. This was before the establishment of our present cathedraticum. 

24 This brother was Edward B. Miles who died at Bloomfield, Ken- 
tucky, February 4, 1846. 

25 Notre Dame Archives. Father Schacht had been in Belgium on a 


vacation. Beginning with 1847, Bishop Miles’ allotments from the Propa- 
gation of the Faith had been cut to about one fourth, or less, of what 


tJ 


FAIRER GROWTH 461 


The Father of the Church in Tennessee was now in 
his sixties. Hardships, age, and labors had so told on 
his strength that he could no longer spend days or even 
weeks in the saddle at a stretch. The weight of a large 
physical frame and not infrequent periods of ill health 
also interfered with his journeys. Yet he continued to 
visit his diocese as often as he possibly could, making his 
way into every nook and corner that no Catholic family 
or individual might be overlooked. When it was feasi- 
ble, he went by train; but there were then few places in 
the state which could be reached in this wise. Often, in 
order to conserve his energy, he took the unpalatable 
stage-coach even for short distances. For the same rea- 
son, when going to the missions in the farther west, he 
ordinarily travelled by the long, circuitous route of the 
boat on the Cumberland, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers. 

Similarly, an ambassador of Christ in the fullest sense 
of the word, our apostle directed the work of his under- 
shepherds, no less than watched over his flock, with scru- 
tinous eye and unflagging zeal. Still he pointed out the 
way for all with a fatherly kindliness which won the 
hearts alike of priests and people. Non-Catholics con- 
tinued to vie with those of his own fold in their love and 
esteem for him. Not many years ago, one used fre- 
quently to hear it said in Nashville that, “had it not been 
for his religion, Bishop Miles could have held the city in 
the palm of his right hand.’ Although not so well 
known elsewhere, he was scarcely less beloved in the rest 
of his diocese. 

From the beginning, Tennessee’s first chief pastor 
was their average the first six years of his episcopacy. Doubtless, how- 


ever, one of the causes of the reduction was the ever-increasing number 
of calls on the society for assistance. 


462 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


rarely left the state except on business of importance, or 
to oblige his confréres in the hierarchy. The occasional 
visits to his earlier fields of labor, which he thoroughly 
enjoyed, were nearly all made either on his way from 
home for other purposes, or on the return journey. We 
have found no record of an absence in 1858, and of but 
one in 1854, from which it appears that he was out of 
his diocese only once in those two years. ‘This was for 
the consecration of the Right Rev. Anthony O’ Regan 
as bishop of Chicago at Saint Louis, July 25, 1854; 
but he eS #0 unwell that he could not attend the august 
ceremony.” 

Catholicity’s eoathie in Chattanooga demanded his 
attention, no less than delighted his paternal heart. 
Doubtless it was while on a journey thither that he ad- 
ministered confirmation on Low Sunday, April 23, 
1854, for Father Jacquet who then labored among the 
men working on the railroads and in the coal mines 
south of Nashville. Knoxville had also returned to its 
own, in spite of prejudice, not only so far as to deserve 
a mention in the Catholic Almanac for the first time in 
1854, but also to be in a fair way of having a church. 
This also, there can be no doubt, was a source of joy as 
well as of care to the holy bishop. ‘There, too, labor in 
the construction of railroads brought the change.” 

However, Doctor Shea seems certainly in error when 
he writes: “Rev. H. F. Parke, of Wytheville, found 
many of his flock drifting into Tennessee in search of 
better wages. He followed them in his visits and report- 
ed to the Bishop at Nashville, who, in time, stationed a 

26 The Telegraph, August 12, 1854. 


27 Cathedral records at Nashville; Telegraph, August 12, 1854; Al- 
manac, 1854, p. 175. 


FAIRER GROWTH 463 


priest at Knoxville.” The most diligent search failed 
to reveal any record, or even a tradition, in support of 
this statement. Father Parke did not go to Wytheville 
until the end of 1852. Neither in the outline of his own 
life, which is given on page sixteen of his “Some Notes 
on the Rise and Spread of the Catholic Missions in Vir- 
ginia,” nor anywhere in the pamphlet does he so much 
as mention ‘l'ennessee. ‘The only reference we have 
found to his presence in the state regards a visit, in 1860, 
to the Aikens at Jonesborough, some years after Knox- 
ville had its church and resident pastor.” 

Baptismal registers, the Catholic Almanac, and other 
sources show that Father Brown, stationed at Chatta- 
nooga, had charge of Knoxville and other places in 
eastern Tennessee. Before the close of 1854, we find 
him proposed as worthy of the miter. Although our 
apostle would suffer any sacrifice in order that a subject 
of his might be so honored, if he felt that he would 
make a good bishop, he maintained that no priest should 
be placed in so responsible a position until he had been 
well tried by experience and proved himself to be a man 
of prudence and judgment, as well as possessed of zeal 
and ability. Accordingly, as he had done in the case 
of Father Grace, he wrote to Archbishop Francis P. 


Kenrick on this subject: 
Nashville, November 3, 1854. 
Monseigneur: 
I have just received a letter from Bishop Reynolds stating that 
he had put the name of Rev. H. V. Brown on the list for Bishop of 


28 SHEA, History of the Church, IV, 437; Father John F. Aiken, 
Georgetown, October 31, 1860, to one of his brothers, Jonesborough (Nash- 
ville Archives). The Aikens certainly kept Bishop Miles informed on 
matters Catholic in those parts of eastern Tennessee. The bishop was 
dead at the time of this visit of Father Parke. 


464 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Savannah; and he requests me to write Your Grace on the subject. 
In doing so I beg leave to say that I do not consider Mr. Brown as 
qualified for that office as yet, although he is zealous and fulfills his 
duties very well on the missions. He needs more experience. 
Moreover, he is a neophyte. Non neophytum, ne in superbiam 
elatus [It behoveth a bishop, says Saint Paul, to be no neophyte, 
lest he be puffed up with pride].?° 

Be kind enough to obtain a blessing for me from His Holiness, 
and allow me to wish you a safe return to your Diocese. 

I am, Monseigneur, with great esteem and respect, your most 
obedient servant, 


‘TRicuarp Pius Miss, 
Bishop of Nashville.®° 


Little by little the foundations of the diocese had been 
deepened, strengthened, and rendered secure. Although 
no rapid increase in the number of the faithful could be 
anticipated for years yet to come, there could be no 
doubt that, in spite of difficulties, the Catholic religion 
had at last been placed on a firm basis in Tennessee. In 
the early summer of 1855 business affairs called Bishop 
Miles to Ohio. While there, he accepted an invitation 
to preside and distribute the premiums at the closing 
exercises of Saint Joseph’s College and Saint Mary’s 
Academy, Somerset, in the first week of July. On the 
same oceasion, he administered confirmation at Saint 
Joseph’s and in the town.** 

Know-nothingism, the reader will recall, was then 
rampant throughout the country. Accordingly, the 
Telegraph of July 21 informs us, in his sermon to those 
confirmed, the bishop “told them how happy it made 
him to see them offering themselves to God as His sol- 

29 This reference is to I Timothy, III, 1-6. 


30 Baltimore Archives, Case 30, Q 2. 
31 Telegraph, July 14 and July 21, 1855. 


FAIRER GROWTH 465 


diers. He exhorted them to remain firm to the step 
they had taken, and to mind not the sneers and menaces 
of that contemptible organization which foolishly is 
seeking to destroy that holy institution against which 
even the gates of hell cannot prevail.” 

Two other journeys in the same year are noted in the 
records of the day, and deserve mention in our work. 
One of them was to Kentucky. Father M. A. O’Brien 
first invited Bishop Spalding to dedicate the beautiful 
stone Gothic Saint Rose’s which he had built near 
Springfield. But Doctor Spalding had other engage- 
ments—or perhaps he felt that Bishop Miles should 
perform this ceremony at a place in which he had lived 
so long, and loved so well. Be this as it may, the latter’s 
services were now solicited; and on Saint Dominic’s 
Day, August 4, 1855, he blessed the new church with all 
the solemnities of the ritual. For many years the event 
formed a frequent topic of conversation among the 
people of the parish.*” 

Meanwhile, a summons had been sent out to the suf- 
fragans of Saint Louis for the first provincial council, 
which opened in that city on October seventh. It was 
a notable assemblage, and enacted some important legis- 
lation for the government of the western Church. Be- 
sides the Most Rev. R. P. Kenrick, those who took part 
in it were Bishops Loras, Miles, Henni, Cretin, and 
O’Regan. Bishop John B. Miége, vicar apostolic of 
Kansas and Indian Territory, was absent, while the 
Diocese of Quincy, Llinois, had no spiritual head.*° 

32 Telegraph, September 8, 1855; An American Apostle, pp. 161 ff. 
33 Telegraph, October 13, 20 and 27, 1855; the Metropolitan for Novem- 
ber, 1855. The Diocese of Quincy, Illinois, was established in 1853; but 


no bishop was ever appointed for it. In 1857 it was transferred to 
Alton, of which Father Henry D. Juncker became the first ordinary. 


31 


466 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


For a year after the death of Father Clarkson, Father 
Grace, who then became pastor at Saint Peter’s, was 
left practically alone in west Tennessee. However, the 
records show that he occasionally procured the assis- 
tance of a German priest, neither of the diocese nor of 
his Order, for those of that nationality. A confrere, 
Father James V. Daly, aided him for a short time 
towards the end of 1849, while F'ather Orengo spent the 
latter half of 1850 in that part of the state. Father 
Cubero, who came with the Dominican Sisters, remained 
at Memphis until the arrival of Father John Raymond 
Cleary, whose first baptism there is dated October 9, 
1851. This zealous young clergyman, but lately or- 
dained, was sent by his provincial to be a permanent 
assistant in the city and on the missions. Father J. A. 
Bokel came in April, 1852, to look after the Germans. 
Two years later, June, 1854, he was succeeded by 
Father R. A. Gangloff. Thus, beginning with Father 
Bokel, Memphis and its missions never had less than 
three priests.™*. 

The missionary force was also increased in middle 
Tennessee. A Father Augustine Murphy reached there 
sometime in 1854, or perhaps late in the previous year. 
Most likely he came from Ireland, as we could find no 
earlier trace of him in the United States; and possibly 


34 Church records of Saint Peter’s, Memphis. Father Cubero was born 
in Saragossa, Spain, March 7, 1807, and entered the Order of Saint 
Dominic in his native land. At the time of the suppression of the relig- 
ious orders in Spain, he went to Italy, and was ordained at Viterbo in 
1837. With the exception of the few months in Tennessee, he spent his 
priestly life in Ohio and Kentucky. About 1861, while at Zanesville, 
Ohio, he obtained permission to become a missionary apostolic. He then 
labored at Dayton, Ohio, for nine or ten years, and for a short while 
in Louisville Kentucky. Early in 1872, he became chaplain of the Do- 
minican Sisters at Saint Catherine’s, near Springfield, Kentucky, where 
he died on July 15, 1883. 


FAIRER GROWTH 467 


his services were obtained by Father Schacht, while 
the latter was in Europe. Father Nicholas R. Young, 
a nephew of Ohio’s veteran missioner of the same pat- 
ronymic, appeared in Nashville late in 1854, or early 
in 1855. He had been sent by the Dominican provincial 
to the aid of the sorely pressed bishop, and remained for 
over a year and a half.” 

Father Orengo, although he had missions of his own, 
was eminently an itinerant harvester of souls. A spiri- 
tual watchman we may call him. Ever on the alert, as 
well as ready for the orders of his bishop, an appeal 
from a brother priest, a call from the people, or a notice 
from some one in need, whether spiritual or temporal, 
the Italian clergyman was here, there, and everywhere. 
It took more than one horse with sinews of steel for his 
incessant travels. Nowhere was he a stranger through- 
out the length and breadth of Tennessee. Oftentimes 
did the bare earth serve him for a bed, the saddle for a 
pillow, and the overhanging trees for protection, whilst 
the stars in heaven’s canopy twinkled joyfully down 
upon his peaceful slumbers at night. He appeared 
never to grow weary, nor to become discouraged. 

Not infrequently his only food for the day consisted 
of cheese and crackers, which he ever carried in his 
pockets. For his faithful steed he stored corn in a bag 

35 Father Young’s name appears in the Almanac for Tennessee only 
in 1856, but he baptizes at Nashville in February, 1855. Father Murphy’s 
is given for the first time in the Almanac in 1855. There is something of 
a tradition in Nashville that Bishop Miles went to Ireland on business in 
the early fifties; but as no record to that effect could be discovered, and 
all indications seem to point to the contrary, we are inclined to the belief 
that Father Schacht’s visit abroad has been changed into a journey of 
the bishop. It is possible, however, that Father Murphy received orders 


late in life in this country—perhaps even from Bishop Miles himself, 
though no record of it was discovered. 


468 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


flung across the animal’s back. While it enjoyed its 
meal, he partook of his own frugal portion, which 
he washed down with a little coffee heated in a tin cup 
(both of which he invariably took with him) over a small 
fire lighted by the roadside. Nor rain nor shine, nor 
heat nor cold, did he suffer to prevent a work of mercy, 
whether spiritual or temporal. Balmy as the climate of 
his native land was his cheerful disposition. Hiveryone 
loved him, for he greeted all with an open heart, no less 
than with a glad hand and a welcoming smile. Uncom- 
promising with evil and error, he was the soul of com- 
passion towards the sinner and the deceived. Many 
wayward lives did he reform; not a few converts did 
he bring into the Church.*® 

Father John M. Jacquet was another of 'Tennessee’s 
indefatigable missionaries. Indeed, there seems to have 
been almost a holy rivalry among some of them to see 
who could undergo the greatest hardships and priva- 
tions. From the time he left the cathedral (1847 or 
1848), he knew no rest. At first, his visits extended 
from Chattanooga to Jonesborough. Later he was 
commissioned to look after the spiritual needs of the 
Catholic laborers in the coal mines and on the railroads 
and other public works in the southern and eastern 
parts of the state—mostly around Chattanooga. He is 
said to have built a small church near the Chattanooga 
tunnel, which was burned down by “the enemy.” 


36 Some years ago, the old people in Tennessee were wont to tell the 
most edifying stories of Father Orengo’s missionary life there. The late 
Rev. Eugene Gazzo and two of the early Dominican Sisters at Memphis, 
Sisters Vincent Nicolas and Mary Pius Fitzpatrick, loved to dwell on the 
Italian Friar Preacher’s zeal, labors, and spirit of self-sacrifice. More 
than once, starting from one extreme of the state for another, he trav- 
ersed practically its entire length, stopping at his own mission in the 
central part, just long enough to take a meal and change horses. 


FAIRER GROWTH 469 


Following the toilers from place to place, he slept in 
hovels, subsisted on the coarsest food (which he often 
prepared for himself), and wore the rough garments of 
the ordinary workman of his day. Never was he heard 
to complain of his lot. He bore all and did all with 
alacrity, for it was for the glory of God and the sal- 
vation of souls. Only one fault did the people find with 
him, namely that he was at times somewhat harsh and 
crabbed. Children are said to have feared him for this 
failing, which was no doubt due in part to the life 
which necessity forced upon him. Beneath a severe 
outward appearance there beat a heart tender as a 
mother’s, no less than true as steel. 

Unfortunately, Father Jacquet engaged to labor in 
Tennessee for only ten years. At the end of this period, 
doubtless feeling that he had done his part by the 
Diocese of Nashville, he applied to be received into that 
of Cincinnati. Bishop Miles in a letter of date Septem- 
ber 19, 1855, to the Most Rev. John B. Purcell indicates 
his regret at the loss of so valuable a priest. Apart 
from the slight fault just mentioned, Bishop Miles tells 
his friend Father Jacquet “is an excellent missioner; 
industrious and full of zeal; plain, honest, and blunt; 
and one that will never deceive you.” *‘ 

37 Notre Dame Archives. At first, Father Jacquet wished to go to 
California; but Archbishop Alemany, unwilling to deprive the Diocese 
of Nashville of so serviceable a priest, did not encourage his proffer. 
Father Jacquet was born of Claude and Claudine (Blethery) Jacquet at 
Saint Bonnet, France, August 20, 1817. He was ordained by Louis J. M. 
Cardinal de Bonald, archbishop of Lyons, December 21, 1844. On March 
7, 1845, he obtained the cardinal’s permission to leave France for the 
Diocese of Nashville. 

In Ohio his labors were not less hard, zealous, and self-sacrificing than 
they had been in Tennessee. At first, he was stationed at Temperance- 


ville (Saint Mary’s), Belmont County. About 1866 he went to reside 
at Bellaire, where he had built a church, and was there when that part of 


470 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Although cast in a milder mold, and possessed of a 
more retiring disposition, than his French co-laborer 
whose toils in Tennessee we have just outlined, Father 
Louis Hoste was not less zealous, indefatigable, or 
willing to endure hardships. He seems to have been 
blessed with a sweet priestly character to which the 
Catholics, and even Protestants, took instinctively. 
Possibly because of his gentle nature, he had no love 
for positions of authority which sometimes. demand 
stern decision, if not even stern action. ‘This, we are 
inclined to believe, was what induced him to resign the 
vicar-generalship. He Seems also to have preferred the 
quiet of life in the country to the noise, bustle, and dis- 
tractions of that in a city.* 

While he resided in Nashville, saintly Father Hoste 
had attended several missions in northern ‘Tennessee 
from 1845 or 1846. From 1848, if not before the close 
of the previous year, he made his home at Saint 
Michael’s, Robertson County, where he at once opened 
a school for both sexes and an orphan asylum for boys, 
of which we shall speak more at length later. Suffice 
it here to state that these institutions, together with the 
parish, required all this zealous priest’s time until near 
the state was taken (1868) to form the Diocese of Columbus. In 1869 
he was transferred to Coshocton. In all these places he had charge of 
several missions. In 1895 he retired. In the following year he went to 
spend the rest of his days with Bishop Nicholas A. Gallagher (whom he 
had largely educated for the priesthood), at Galveston, Texas, where 
he died on October 24, 1896. 

Until the end of his long life, he retained the highest regard and the 
deepest affection for Bishop Miles; which, no doubt, combined with his 
own touch with the fathers in Tennessee and the traces of their labors 
in Ohio to make him an ardent admirer of the Order of Saint Dominic. 
This admiration he instilled into the future bishop of Galveston. 


38 Traditions still live of Father Hoste’s mild and amiable disposition, 
and of how he was loved by children. 


FAIRER GROWTH 471 


the end of the period of Bishop Miles’ life covered by 
the present chapter. Just when Father Hoste resigned 
his post as vicar general we have not been able to deter- 
mine with certainty. Although the title does not 
appear after his name from 1848, we are convinced that 
his resignation was not accepted until the appointment 
of a successor four years later; for so apostolic a bishop 
would hardly have left such an important position 
vacant for that length of time.” 

Father Samuel Montgomery, stalwart of character, 
as well as possessed of rare prudence and judgment, 
became vicar general in 1852, holding the position 
through the remainder of Bishop Miles’ life and the 
short administration of his successor, the Right Rev. 
James Whelan. Doubtless it was because of these 
sterling qualities that the Father of the Church in 
Tennessee selected him for the place, even though he 
was not a diocesan clergyman. ‘Tradition tells us that 
the choice met with universal favor, for by all was he 
regarded as a man of God. Ever ready for whatever 
task was assigned him, he continued to be very useful, 
in spite of his age. 

Vigorous Father Ivo Schacht, just in the prime of 
manhood, seemed never to tire. The records of the old 
cathedral show his labors in Nashville, while the History 
of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth attests his 
interest in that community as long as it remained in 
Tennessee. It must have been his youth, or perhaps an 
incipient manifestation of his self-will and officiousness, 
that prevented his appointment as vicar general. One 
of the new-comers, Father Murphy, superintended the 
bishop’s school and visited neighboring missions. The 


39 Catholic Almanacs from 1846 to 1855. 


472 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


other, Father Young, appears to have been largely 
employed in preaching or lecturing through the state. 

Anti-Catholic bigotry has never been more rampant 
or violent in the country than it was at this period. 
To Tennessee’s credit be it said that, while it was there, 
it did not attain the strength which might have been 
expected. Possibly this was due in no small measure to 
the influence of Bishop Miles and his clergy. Knox- 
ville, where priests had been seen the least frequently, 
witnessed perhaps the most violent manifestations of the 
unnatural frenzy. When, early in 1855, a plot of 
ground one hundred and-fifty feet square was purchased 
just outside the city limits for Catholic purposes, the 
wrath of the bigots knew no bounds. 

Tradition, which has found its way into manuscript 
and public print more than once, tells us that Father 
Brown was compelled to have the little stone church, 
which he started at once, guarded day and night to 
prevent the walls from being torn down, and the mate- 
rial thrown into the Tennessee River. History sug- 
gests that the prejudice was strongest among the 
descendants of the former Catholic families spoken of 
by Father Badin. However, the fair-minded Protes- 
tants prevailed, and peace was restored. The Know- 


ville Register of June 7, 1855, told its readers: 

The building designed for a Catholic Church and school in this 
city is still in a state of progress. We have been requested to 
state that the lot on which it is being constructed was not given 
to the Catholic Church by any member of the American Party, but 
was purchased from Jacob Newman, deceased, who of course had 
a right to sell it to any one he pleased. We make this statement 
as an act of justice to all concerned—as true facts that cannot be 


doubted.?9 
40 Deed Book T, pp. 385-387 (Recorder’s Office, Knoxville) contains a 





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REV. JOSEPH L. BIEMANS REV. NICHOLAS R. YOUNG, 
Oo Re 


a 
4 
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THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH 


KNOXVILLE’S FIRST RESIDENT PASTOR, FIRST CHURCH, AND THE 
PRIEST WHO PREACHED AT ITS DEDICATION 


FAIRER GROWTH 473 


The exquisitely beautiful little temple of prayer was 
dedicated to God, under the title of the Immaculate 
Conception, shortly after the Register’s statement. 
Bishop Miles, it is said, performed the ceremony, and 
Father Nicholas R. Young preached a sermon. Know- 
ing what we do of the Friar Preacher’s classic diction, 
eloquence, and happiness of speech, it is hardly an 
exaggeration to say that his discourse must have not 
only pleased his audience, but also have done much to 
allay the spirit of intolerance in Knoxville. Before the 
close of the year (1855), the Rev. Joseph L. Biemans, 
a splendid type of the Belgian missionary, arrived in 
Nashville. He was forthwith stationed at Knoxville as 
its first resident pastor, with a charge that extended 
near and far. Bishop Miles could have but experienced 
the keenest joy that this part of his diocese could at 
last practically sustain a priest, and that he could spare 
one for its special care.* 


title bond dated February 28, 1855, whereby Jacob and William G. New- 
man bind themselves under penalty of twenty-four hundred dollars to 
deed to Bishop Miles a plot of ground fronting one hundred and fifty 
feet on Vine Street, and extending one hundred and fifty feet along 
Crooked Street, when he paid the last four hundred of the twelve hun- 
dred dollars of the purchase money. This was to be on February 28, 
1857. Deed Book V, pp. 575-576, gives the deed for the same to Miles, 
February 2, 1857, by T. W. and J. W. Newman, administrators of Jacob 
Newman, for themselves and William Newman. Deed Book W, pp. 13-14, 
gives a deed for an adjoining plot (fronting ten feet on Walnut Street, 
and extending, the same width, the full length of the above property) 
by Willlam G. Swan to Bishop Miles. The instrument states that Mr. 
Swan did this for “a sufficient consideration.” It is said that Swan, 
though not a Catholic, made the bishop a present of these ten feet so 
that no one would be able to build a house too near the pretty little stone 
church. 

41 An outline of Father Bieman’s life on the back of a mortuary card 
says that he was born at Edeghem, Belgium, November 3, 1831, left his 
native country for the missions of the United States in 1851, and was 
sent to Knoxville in 1853. This last date is certainly erroneous, and we 


474 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


This arrangement left Father Brown free to devote 
his undivided attention to the growing parish at Chat- 
tanooga and its missions. At Memphis Father Grace 
was always and ably assisted by two curates. When 
(in June, 1854) Father Bokel, who was much beloved 
wherever he labored, became master of novices in Ohio, 
Father Gangloff took his place at Saint Peter’s. The 
care of the Germans in western ‘Tennessee fell partic- 
ularly to these two men, but they also gave a helping 
hand to the pastor in other work.** Father Cleary did 
not confine his labors to the diocese. Up and down the 
majestic Father of Waters he travelled, laboring among 
the workmen on the boats and levees, no less than trav- 
ersed northwestern Mississippi, eastern Arkansas, and 
western Tennessee in every direction. 

Perhaps no clergyman ever chose harder, less invit- 
ing, and more unwholesome toil than that to which this 
self-sacrificing son of Saint Dominic devoted himself 
with all his heart. He was the soul of charity. The 


are strongly inclined to think that the second is also an error. The 
card was got out in London, England, where he had labored, after leav- 
ing Tennessee, until two years before his death, which took place in his 
native town. This may account for the errors. Very likely Father 
Schacht came in touch with him in 1852 or 1853, and engaged his ser- 
vices for Tennessee when he should be ordained, which, if the date given 
for his birth is correct, could hardly have taken place earlier than 1854. 

42 Almanacs from 1853 to 1856; Father Bokel’s diary. Father Bokel 
was born on September 1, 1820, in the hamlet of Herbergen, near Lonin- 
gen, in southwestern Oldenburg, Germany. His parents were George and 
Catherine (Kramer) Bokel. He came to Baltimore in 1838. In 1842 he 
went to Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio, as a postulant. There he received the 
habit of Saint Dominic, September 18, 1844, made his profession, Sep- 
tember 25, 1845, and was ordained by Archbishop Eccleston on June 20, 
1848. He remained in Ohio until made the first pastor of the Germans 
in Memphis. After leaving there, he labored in many parts of the country 
(principally in Ohio, Kentucky, and Washington City), and spent much 
time on the missions. 


FAIRER GROWTH 475 


poor were the special object of his tireless ministra- 
tions. No wonder the people loved him. Labor and 
exposure undermined his health, rendering him an easy 
victim for the yellow fever which he contracted while 
attending the sick, and of which he died on September 
17, 1855, within a few hours after he was stricken with 
the fatal malady. 

The Daily Appeal of Memphis says of him, Sep- 
tember 18, 1855: “We regret to announce the death, 
of yellow fever, on yesterday, of Father Cleary. We 
have the assurance that his decease was produced by 
unremitted attention to the sick of his congregation and 
his previous delicate health.” Similarly, the Catholic 
Telegraph of September twenty-ninth states: “We 
have heard with deep regret of the death of Rev. Mr. 
Cleary, of congestive [yellow] fever, at Memphis a 
few days since. Mr. Cleary was ordained at St. 
Joseph’s, Somerset, by Archbishop Purcell only about 
four or five years ago; but his services to religion in 
Memphis, and for many miles up and down the Mis- 
sissippi, will never be forgotten.” *° 

Although it was much against his will, his lovable character caused 
him to be nearly always in some post of responsibility. He was superior 
at Memphis in 1878, and was engaged in giving a retreat when the yellow 
fever epidemic of that year broke out. At once he stopped the retreat, 
and hurried back to the afflicted city; but on his arrival he received a 
telegram ordering him away in virtue of holy obedience. From this will 
be seen the lack of both charity and truth in the insinuation of a certain 
paper that he fled because of terror. No man would have laid down his 
life more courageously than Father Bokel. In advanced age he spent 
several years as chaplain of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, Wis- 
consin. Wherever he labored, he left a hallowed memory because of his 
priestly zeal, and saintly life, and eminent virtues. He died in Washington 
City, March 28, 1902. 

43 Father Cleary was born in Dublin, Ireland, in March, 1827, his 


parents being Thomas and Margaret (Deagan) Cleary. There also he 
received his early education. In 1844 he came direct to Saint Joseph’s, in 


476 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Cleary was the first priest to die of yellow 
fever in ‘Tennessee. His premature death was a shock 
to his many friends, a severe loss to religion as well as 
to his brethren, and no doubt a cause of deep sorrow 
to Bishop Miles. Father Orengo filled the gap created 
by it at Memphis until the arrival of a successor late in 
November. 

Ohio, as a postulant, received the habit on November 16, 1845, and took 
the religious vows a twelvemonth later. He was ordained by Archbishop 
Purcell, July 26, 1850. Thence until he went to Memphis he labored in 


Ohio. His priestly career was short in years, but filled with fruitful 
toil, and rich in virtue. 


CHAPTER XX 
RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 


Years ago, Brother Azarias wrote of Catholic 
history: “The past is ours, but we treat it shamefully. 
We neglect it; we let its sacred memory be enyeloped 
in a growth of rank weeds that hide or efface its noble 
records; we permit its deeds to be misrepresented, its 
honor to be stained, its glory to be tarnished; and 
scarcely, if at all, in feeble accents do we enter protest.” 
In a similar strain, a contributor to the Nashville 
Banner of October 24, 1897, told his readers: “If the 
walls of beautiful St. Mary’s Cathedral could speak, 
they would tell the heart story of many a one who has 
worshipped God within their confines in the half 
century the edifice has been dedicated to the service 
of God. Not even the most casual visitor can cross its 
sacred threshold without a feeling of reverential awe.” 

Kindred thoughts and sentiments are responsible, in 
part at least, for the chapter which we now undertake. 
Besides, there can be no diocese without the faithful. 
whilst beginnings have a special interest all their own. 
However, since a mutiplicity of the names of the early 
Catholics would render our volume of undue size, and 
is scarcely expected in a work of its character, we shall 
be content with the earliest discovered in the research 
which was more or less directed merely to the acquisition 
of a better knowledge of Bishop Miles’ pastoral life in 
Tennessee. 

477 


478 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


In fact, this part of our story is a later determination. 
While, for the reason given, it must necessarily be 
incomplete, and perhaps at times inexact, it can hardly 
fail to be of interest to the reader, especially the Ten- 
nesseean. May its recital lead to a history along the lines 
of the excellent book of the Hon. Ben. Webb on 
Catholicity in the neighboring State of Kentucky. 
The centenary of the diocese would be an appropriate 
occasion for its appearance, as well as afford time for 
ransacking records, both civic and ecclesiastic, which 
would be necessary in order that the task might be at 
all well done. Nor can the Knights of Columbus in the 
Diocese of Nashville aid a work that would redound 
more to their credit.’ 

Few will be disposed to question that Timothy De 
Montbrun and his family were Nashville’s first Cath- 
olics. Others perhaps were not slow to follow, though, 
through lack of priests, they most probably gave up 
their faith. In the issue of the Banner just quoted we 
read: “The records of 1784-1785 show that of the 
twenty-six taxpayers enrolled on the books half a dozen 
bear Catholic names, viz.: Carr, Gillespie, Hayes, 

1 From the above remarks the reader can see that this chapter is an 
afterthought. It was not decided upon until much of the book had been 
actually written, and when it was too late personally to copy names from 
the baptismal records, without another visit to Tennessee. Fortunately, 
however, we had done this for Nashville; while Fathers Francis D. 
Grady of Knoxville and Innocent Damiani of Memphis kindly sent us 
the earliest records of those places, and Miss Nora Crimmins copied the 
first year (1852) of the register at Chattanooga. Nearly all the other 
names we give are taken from notes of or letters to Fathers William 
Walsh and John K. Larkin, which we transcribed while at the Cathedral, 
Nashville. Although, for this reason, in the matter of earliest names 
(always one of the historian’s hardest problems), we can hardly claim 
that degree of certitude which we make bold to believe characterizes the 


rest of the book, it is still hoped that the present chapter will fairly serve 
the purpose for which it is written. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 479 


Mulloy, Neville, and Walker.”* About the first five 
of these names there can be little doubt. There are 
others not less distinctly Catholic in the early annals 
of the state capital; but, as it is not known whether 
they professed the religion indicated by their patro- 
nymics, it seems useless to give them here. 

Father Badin has told us that there were a few 
Catholics in the city and vicinity in the opening years 
of the nineteenth century, although he mentions only 
the staunch old Frenchman, De Montbrun. Never- 
theless an apparently well authenticated tradition tells 
us that there was then in Nashville a Mrs. Jane Manea, 
a native of Dublin, Ireland, and that mass was said in 
her house in 1810, which, it will be recalled, was the 
year in which the venerable missionary visited the city. 
Her daughter Jane married a man by the name of 
Carroll from Virginia, and her descendants still live in 
Tennessee’s capital.° 

Although others might possibly be unearthed in the 
county records, the names of practically all the Catholics 
who went to labor on Nashville’s first bridge are now 
buried in oblivion. Philip Callaghan, who later married 
Mrs. Manea’s granddaughter, Mary Carroll, seems to 
have been one of them. Joseph Dwyer and his wife, 
whose daughter Elizabeth became Mrs. William D. 

2 Nashville Banner, October 24, 1897. Facts, August 18, 1894, Barr 
(St. Mary's Cathedral, Nashville, Tennessee, p. 9), and a manuscript 
sketch by Father William Walsh (Nashville Archives) make the same 
statement. 

3 This tradition is still rather general in Nashville. It is particularly 
strong among the descendants of Philip Callaghan, an early Catholic 
of the city who married Mary Carroll, a granddaughter of Mrs. Manea. 
One of them, Mrs. Thomas J. Tyne, still preserves and treasures two 


silver candlesticks used at mass in the Manea homestead, and two crystal 
vases employed in administering the sacrament of baptism. 


480 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Phillips; Patrick Kinney; and Daniel Barr, who mar- 
ried Miss Susanna Gallagher, go back to the early days 
of the city’s Catholicity, if they were not even among 
the mechanics taken down from Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, 
or Louisville. Possibly a Mr. Gallagher and a Mr. 
Slavin, whose first names and family connections we 
did not learn, Thomas McLaughlin and his wife Ann, 
and a Mrs. Flowers go back almost to the same period.* 

The five brothers, Michael, Hugh, James, Patrick, 
and William Burns, and Thomas and Margaret 
(Coyle) Farrell, together with their son James, who 
is said to have been Nashville’s first altar boy, certainly 
settled in the city in the thirties. To the same period 
belong John and Elizabeth (McGran) McGovern; 
John McHenry; John Herman and Mary (Ratter- 
man) Buddeke; John G. and Frederic Ratterman 
(possibly also their father, Bernard Ratterman, who 
died at Nashville in 1852, at the age of eighty-two 
years); and Andrew Morrison, whose wife was Miss 
Sarah Lawrence. ‘The agent for the Catholic Advocate 
at Nashville, from 1836 to 1838, was one F. Lynch. He 
was succeeded by W. Dougherty. Others still might 
be revealed in Father Durbin’s records at Saint 
Vincent’s. Union County, Kentucky.° 

Old Saint Mary’s registers, now at the new cathedral, 
show the baptisms, in 1838, of the children of 'Thomas 

4 The above is a prevailing opinion in Nashville, and one finds it stated 
in’more than one short account of the city’s early Catholicity. 

5 The burial records show that Bernard Ratterman died on September 
2, 1852. Probably he was the father of the other Rattermans. The 
Advocate for these years, passim, gives Lynch and Dougherty as its agents 
in Nashville. Staunch Michael Burns married Miss Margaret Gilliam, 
who was not a Catholic at the time; but she became an exemplary con- 


vert. A number of the names in these two paragraphs appear on the early 
church records. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 481 


and Catherine (Molloy) May; John and Mary 
(Hughes) Flannagan; Joseph and Louisa (Mitchel) 
Despres; John and Emily (Frensly) Garvin; Cor- 
nelius and Tabitha (Allen) Boyle; and John and 
Martha (Watterson) Griffin. Omitting all names that 
have appeared before, as was done in the case of those 
whose children were baptized at this time, the sponsors 
were: Patrick Monahan, Catherine Brannan, Charles 
Kinney, Mary Kinney, W. and Jane Murray, William 
Lowe, and Eleanor McLaughlin. 

These were followed, in the next year, by the baptism 
of children whose parents were: John and Mary (San- 
ders) Dane; George and Louisa (Kutman) Benzer; 
Andrew and Caroline (Dildy) O’Neil; James and 
Margaret (Shaunpy) Quinlon; Patrick and Martha 
(Woods) Armstrong; Jeremiah and Mary (Lyning) 
Donovan; William and Bridget (Coyle) Lowe; John 
and Judith Baptiste; Charles and Frances French; 
and James and Mary (Harrison) McGrath. The 
sponsors in 1839, still omitting names previously shown, 
were: Julius Werner, Dina Burns, Collum Dorly, Ann 
Fitzsimmons, Kennedy Lonergan, Eleanor Fitzsim- 
mons, Martin and Anastasia Brazil, Jeremiah Shin- 
nick, Jane McCarthy, James McLaughlin, Eleanor 
McGovern, Mary Bonfils, William Dougherty (likely 
the Advocate’s agent), James McDermott, and Eleanor 
McLaughlin. Daniel McGrath, whose wife was bap- 
tized in 1840, should also be included in the list. 

Doubtless these names, together with some that 
appear in the records of 1840 and 1841, represent the 
handful of Catholic families with which Bishop Miles 
began his pastoral labors in Nashville. George H. 
Wessell, the Kuhns, and Mr. and Mrs. Francis A. 

32 


482 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Hyronemus, J. D. Plunkett, Mr. and Mrs. Francis 
W. Collet, and William Dorrity, who are sometimes 
mentioned as persons who took an active part in early 
church affairs, appear to belong to a somewhat later 
date. The same is true of Mrs. Charles Sanders, whose 
name has appeared in a previous chapter. ‘Thomas 
Murphy likewise belongs to this category. He was 
probably a grandnephew of Bishop Miles, and brother 
to Mrs. Sarah (Murphy) Marcell who held the position 
of organist in the cathedral for a number of years, and 
was noted for her musical accomplishments.° 

Indeed, it is said that not a few of our prelate’s 
Catholic admirers in Kentucky followed him to Nash- 
ville, one of whom was Joseph H. McGill, a brother of 
the third bishop of Richmond, Virginia. Irish names 
outnumber those of any other nationality in the bap- 
tismal records through all Bishop Miles’ life as chief 
pastor. German patronymics appear with the next 
greatest frequency. It was in part for the benefit of 
this portion of the parish that Father Schacht was first 
brought from Clarksville to the cathedral, and special 
services were held for them at given hours on Sunday. 
One is rather surprised at the number of French and 
Italian names, and it explains why the old Catholic 
Almanacs speak of Fathers Hoste and Jacquet being 
the pastors of the French in the city. 

The Buddekes, Rattermans, Wessells, Kuhns, and 
Hyronemuses, we are told, were leaders in German 
Catholic activities. Michael Burns, Philip Callaghan, 
Thomas Farrell, Mrs. Charles Sanders, Mrs. William 


6 The Nashville Banner of April 30, 1904, says that Mrs. Marcell was 
the second organist of the cathedral. Doubtless the Henry C. Marcell, 
whose death is noted in the cathedral records as having taken place on 
February 8, 1854 (“aged 49 years”), was her husband. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 483 


D. Phillips, and her daughter, Mrs. Felix Demoville, 
and Philip Olwell were among those who never tired 
in aiding religion in whatever way they could. Burns 
and Farrell seem often to have been the bishop’s 
advisers in matters financial. Whilst the sum generally 
given (eighteen hundred dollars) is likely an exaggera- 
tion, it can hardly be denied that these last two gentle- 
men canvassed the city for means to repair Holy 
Rosary Cathedral before the arrival of the Father of 
the Church in Tennessee, or that by far the greater 
amount was subscribed by non-Catholics.’ 

Frequent reference has been made to the generosity 
and kindliness of this latter element in the city towards 
the bishop. Among those who showed him a signal 
friendship must be placed Felix Grundy and his family. 
Another was Vernon K. Stephenson, whose wife, Miss 
Elizabeth Childress, was one of Nashville’s early con- 
verts and devout Catholics. 

In this connection, it should be further noted that the 
homes of the Catholics, whether rich or poor, were ever 
open to their clergy without limit as to the time of wel- 
come. ‘The bishop himself, in the goodness of his heart, 
did not hesitate to give his own room to some travelling 
priest, and trust to this southern hospitality for his per- 
sonal accommodation. Callaghan, Buddeke, Burns, 
Farrell, Ratterman, Phillips, Sanders, and Wessell are 
the names most frequently mentioned as those who often 
thus sheltered the care-worn ambassadors of Christ. 
Possibly the recurrence of such acts of charity, espe- 
cially in the earlier missionary days, is responsible for the 


7 The activity, goodness, and interest of these people still form the 
subject of frequent conversation, for they are one of Nashville’s cherished 
traditions. We also find them mentioned in a number of brief accounts 
of the early Church there. 


484 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


exaggerated time the bishop or a priest is said to have 
lived in some of these homes.® 

The principal interest of all, even if they could do 
but little towards the project, was not merely that they 
should have a place of worship worthy of the great 
purpose to which it was to be consecrated. ‘They wished 
it to contribute to the greater glory of God and His true 
Church by the fact that it should be one of the finest 
ecclesiastical structures in Tennessee’s capital. For 
this Father Brown’s artistic talent and training came in 
well. During the first two or three years of his priestly 
life, he devoted every spare moment to painting and 
decorating the interior of the sacred edifice; and when 
he completed the task, their was perhaps no other such 
object of art in the state comparable to his work in the 
Seven Dolors Cathedral. 

Sumner County’s first Catholics, it can hardly be 
doubted, were Hugh and Nancy (Duffy) Rogan, and 
their sons Bernard and Francis. ‘The latter and his 
children William, John, Charles, and Clarissa (Mrs. 
Joseph Desha) long remained among the Church’s 
mainstays there. At Gallatin, the county-seat and not 
far distant from Rogana, or the Rogan home, Miss 
Jean or Jeanne Floyd was one of the earliest members 
of the faith. There also, or in the vicinity, settled the 
pioneers Francis, John, Patrick, and Michael Duffy, 
and brought their aged father. John Dwyer and his 
family, James Galvin, the two brothers, Daniel and 
Andrew McAulay, together with their sister Anne, and 

8 William D. Phillips lived in Edgefield, now East Nashville. He 
himself became a Catholic only on his death-bed. Still his family were of 
the faith, and in his home mass was said for the people in that neighbor- 


hood. Charles Sanders was another of the bishop’s friends who came 
into the Church late in life. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 485 


apparently a family by the name of Fisher formed 
another group. 

Quite possibly some of these people labored on the 
Nashville bridge, and moved to Sumner County after 
its completion. The two McAulay men were agents 
for the Catholic Advocate, which, in its issue of May 7, 
1842, tells us: 

Died in Gallatin, Tennessee, on Saturday, the 2nd of April, 
after a lingering illness of about a month, Mr. Daniel McAulay, 
in the fifty-third year of his age. Mr. McAulay was a native of 
Ireland, but had been a resident of Gallatin for twenty-seven 
years previous to his death. Although thrown by circumstances 
into a situation where he had no opportunity of practising, during 
a long series of years, the observances of the Church, yet he 
adhered strenuously to the faith of his forefathers, and by the 
integrity of his conduct, and the rich vein of benevolence and 
Christian charity which animated all his intercourse with society, 
won for himself and for the faith he professed the respect of those 
by whom he was surrounded.? 

Saint Michael’s, the reader will recall, is between 
Turnersville and Springfield in the adjoining county 
Robertson. This place was sometimes called the 
“Byrnes colony” from the fact that it seems to have been 
started by one John Byrne, who moved there from 
Davidson County with his wife, family, a widowed 
sister (Mrs. Redmond), and her two children about 
1838. The baptismal register at Nashville shows the 
names of Henry, Frances, and Harriet Redmond. 
Although Saint Michael’s was the center of considerable 
missionary activity, the only other names discovered in 
connection with it were Levi and Mary (Fisher) 





9 The Advocate of September 24, 1842, shows that Anne McAulay died 
on the seventh of the previous August; while its issue of November 5, 
1845, gives an account of the death of the young convert wife of Andrew 
McAulay, which occurred on the sixth of the preceding July. 


486 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Traughber, Joseph Watson, and a Frenchman called 
Gustave Bouchard. Miss Dorothy Byrne, a daughter of 
the pioneer settler, devoted her long life to the Catholic 
education of the children in the neighborhood of the 
church. 

However, there were several Catholic families on the 
outskirts between this mission and that of Rogana. In 
this section lived people by the name of Hynes, Don- 
ohue, O’F laherty, Morgan, Badjer, and so on. Mass 
was said for them in the home of Michael Hynes, 
Saundersville, and in that of Mrs. O’Flaherty, at 
Goodletsville. | 

Protestant good-will and generosity (or was it in part 
a spirit of enterprise for the growth of the city) were 
largely responsible for the erection of a church in beau- 
tiful Clarksville at so early a date; for there were very 
few of the faith in that locality at the time. ‘The heads 
of the earliest Catholic families there, so far as could be 
gleaned from parish records and other sources, were Mr. 
and Mrs. Thomas McManus; Hugh and Mary (Can- 
on) Foy; George Kinney and wife; a Mr. Dougherty 
and a Mr. Walter; Balthasar and Martha Griter; Pe- 
ter and Collette Catoir; James and Honora Coughlan; 
Thomas and Henrietta Marten (Mr. Marten was not 
a Catholic) ; Francis and Mary McManus; Michael and 
Anna (Corts) Schmitt; Thomas and Catherine (Bur- 
den) McMahon; John and Sarah Dunlevy; Denis 
and Honora Sullivan; John and Henrietta O’Neal; 
and perhaps Andrew and Margaret O’Sullivan. Pat- 
rick McManus, Margaret Griter, John Barres, John 
Whelan, Lucy H. Scott, Louis Schmitt, and Edward 
Ryan were also pioneer Catholics of the district; but we 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 487 


did not discover whether they were married or single.”° 

Happily, the reminiscences of Humphreys County 
have been better preserved. In his report for the 
Catholic Almanac of 1845, Bishop Miles says of the 
settlement there: “This is a new plantation comprising 
a large tract of good and cheap land, sixty miles from 
Nashville, near the Tennessee River, and on the stage 
road from Nashville to Memphis.” A Doctor Knapp 
of New Orleans, who married a Miss Neale of Mary- 
land, purchased an extensive area in this county, and 
donated a thousand acres to the bishop, which the 
apostolic man sold for twenty-five cents an acre in an 
effort to draw Catholic settlers into his diocese. About 
ten years later, six hundred acres more were secured 
for the purpose, and the disposition of it entrusted to 
Father Orengo, whose activity gave birth to the parish 
now known as McEwen." 

Among the early settlers were James Neale (a 
brother-in-law of Doctor Knapp), Michael Brennan, 
Abraham Burchiel, Frank McQuaid, Patrick Burns, 
Nicholas Bradley, James Sheehy, Anthony and Andrew 
Leahman, Thomas Langan, Peter Connor, Thomas 
Tarpy, Patrick and John Dougherty, Peter Curley, 
Michael Pyburn, Patrick Halpin, John Glasner, 

10 Father C. P. Wassem kindly furnished the names from the Clarks- 
ville church records. Picturesque Clarksville, Past and Present—A His- 
tory of the City of Hills, although it was written in 1887, and speaks 
of other churches, says nothing of the Catholic Church. Several of the 
names it mentions are distinctly Catholic, but we do not know if those 
who bore them professed the faith. Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee, 
published in 1886, says that the Boylans and Dunbarrys were then among 
the oldest Catholic families in Clarksville. However, they do not seem 
to have been among the first in the city. Today the Catholics of Clarks- 
ville, whilst not numerous, are highly regarded by their fellow citizens. 


11 The Almanac for 1843 speaks of this colony, which shows that it 
began in 1842. 


488 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Thomas and William Glynn, John Hughes, Luke 
Farley, Terrence McGuire, Jeremiah Sheehan, Patrick 
Gilgannon, Patrick Herity, Thomas Conley, John 
Broderick, and Jeremiah O’Neil. ‘There were also some 
families by the name of Dorney, Curtis, Gerraghty, 
Gallagher, McInroe, Heel, Taylor, and Larkin. There, 
too, now settled Thomas McManus and Hugh Foy, who 
had been in Clarksville.’ 

All the above places are in what is called “Middle 
Tennessee.” In the same division of the state the 
Almanac mentions missions at Franklin, Williamson 
County; Murfreesborough, Rutherford County; Leb- 
anon, Wilson County; Dover, Stewart County; 
Perryville, on the western bank of the Tennessee River, 
in Decatur County; Columbia, Maury County; Pulaski, 
Giles County; Fayetteville, Lincoln County; Shelby- 
ville, Bedford County; Manchester, Coffee County; 
and Coal Mines, Marion County. That the location 
of Sycamore Mills was north of Nashville is shown by 
the fact that Father Hoste attended the place. Near 
the city also was the mission called “the Northwestern 
Railroad,” in charge of Father Augustine Murphy. 

Want of time and lack of information in the records 
at Nashville prevented the discovery of the names of 
any of the Catholics in all but three of these missions, 
or larger “stations.” ‘Those unearthed at Franklin 
were Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Kelly; Patrick McLaughlin; 
Mr. and Mrs. James Plunkett; Thomas Dempsey; 
Lawrence and Elizabeth (Clay Duvai) Finn; John 
Finn; Frances Finn; William and Margaret (Brady) 


12 The most of these names were taken from a manuscript account by 
Miss Eliza Pyburn (Nashville Archives) and conversations with Mrs. 
Thomas F. McQuaid, both of whom were born there in the early years 
of the settlement. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 489 


McKeon; Patrick McKeon; Eliza Kernahan; James 
and Eleanor (Harrison) Champion; and Agnes Pol- 
lock. Doctor S$. Pollock, who Bishop Miles tells 
Bishop Blane (1844) contemplates settling at Pointe 
Coupée, Louisiana, was also likely an early settler in 
Franklin.” 

Only two families are mentioned in connection with 
Murfreesborough—one by the name of Harrison, and 
that of John Stanfield. Those of Matthew Martin, 
John Baxter, and Matthew and Margaret (Martin) 
Owen are designated as residents of Fayetteville. 
About eight miles from the city stood the home of Isaac 
and Mary (Daily) Poe. The head of this family was 
an exemplary convert, whose dwelling served as the 
mass-house for a few Catholics in that neighborhood. 
Doubtless Winchester, Franklin County, is not given 
in the Almanac, after the first years of Bishop Miles’ 
episcopacy, because it was one of the smaller stations. 
Yet it has been seen that the venerable James Dardis 
moved there from Knoxville, and that he had a few 
companions in the faith. 

Another division of the state is called “East Tennes- 
see.” During an apostolic journey through a part of 
this section, in the spring of 1844, Father Howard notes 
a number of baptisms. One was that of a child of 
Patrick and Mary Morgan, on the Cumberland Moun- 
tains, for whom Thomas Smyth and Ann Farley were 
sponsors. At William’s Spring, he baptized children of 
Thomas and Elizabeth Gannon, and Denis and Caroline 
Sullivan, together with Elizabeth, the wife of John 
Dady. Here Lawrence Murphy appears as godfather. 


13 Bishop Miles’ letter to Bishop Blanc is dated April 9, 1844, and is 
in Notre Dame Archives. 


490 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


In another place, the missionary did the same for a son 
of Patrick and Martha (Winsight) Daily, and received 
Mrs. Daily into the Church. Patrick McNally acted as 
sponsor. Elsewhere, children of Terrence and Mary 
(Harrison) Fogarty, and John and Dolly (Hennessy) 
Begly received the same sacrament. On the same 
journey, Mary Magdalen Cambden, wife of Patrick 
Thornton, was received into the Church and a daughter 
of James and Margaret (McNeely) McCulla bap- 
tized.“* 

Possibly the most distant point Father Howard 
reached on this occasion was Athens, McMinn County, 
where he christened Ellen, a daughter of John C. and 
Ann Catherine Molloy. From the fact that this is the 
only baptism noted for Athens at the time, and that the 
place is not mentioned among: the stations of the dio- 
cese, except in the first years of its existence, we may 
conclude that, after the Irish laborers on the railroad 
passed on to other parts, but few Catholics were left in 
McMinn County. 

In fact, though there were certainly many others 
of minor importance, only eight stations are given by 
name for this part of the state in the Catholic Almanac 
during the last decade of our apostle’s life. Five of 
these were certainly attended from Knoxville, after that 
place received a_ resident pastor—Tellico Plains, 
Monroe County; Kingston, Roane County; Wartburg, 
Morgan County; Greeneville, Greene County; and 
Jonesborough, Washington County. Most likely 
Father Biemans also had charge of the Bayer Settle- 
ment in Polk County. The Walden’s Ridge and 


14 Baptismal records at Nashville. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 491 


Sequatchie Valley stations fell under the care of 
Father Brown, who resided at Chattanooga. 

The most prominent Catholics at Jonesborough were 
certainly the Aikens. Probably, together with those 
whom they helped to convert, they formed the greater 
part of the faithful in that mission; for they were 
intelligent and did much to spread the light of truth. 
Although a number followed the railroad into Greene 
County, the only ones whose names we caine across 
were William and Honora (Nolan) Joy, who soon 
moved to Knoxville. In none of the other stations in 
the eastern part of the state did patronymics of any of 
the Catholics come under observation.” 

James and Thomas Dardis, Patrick McCormack, 
and his son Edward were among Knoxville’s first 
Catholics. James Dardis moved farther west; but what 
became of the other three and the rest whom Father 
Badin found there is not known. With the building of 
the East Tennessee Railroad Catholics flowed into the 
city in numbers, revived the faith, and finally placed 
the Church on a firm footing there, after a long period 
of the darkest desolation. ‘The most conspicuous of 
these, as well as among the most practical, were ‘Thomas 
L. Fossick, an Englishman, and his family. Fossick 
was a contractor on the railroad. He furnished the 
stone for the first church, and directed its construction. 
Father Brown drew the plans. Fossick’s name deserves 
a conspicuous place in the Catholic annals of east 
Tennessee. All his Catholic toilers labored on the little 
church free of charge. David Grady seems to have 

15 A number of evidences of the Aikens’ spiritual activity were dis- 
covered. Sister Rose, O. S. D., of Saint Cecilia’s Academy, Nashville, 


is a daughter of William and Honora (Nolan) Foy; and she was born 
in Greeneville. 


492 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


been the master mason. When completed the structure 
“was so neat that it looked more like a picture than a 
real building.” *® 

Prior to Fossick, Grady, and their co-workmen, 
however, a few other Catholics seem to have settled 
in Knoxville. Among these were Daniel Lyons, John 
B. and Peter Ricardi, and perhaps William Hayes, 
Michael Foley, and James Reilly. With Fossick were 
evidently James J. Bowser (his half-brother) and 
George Sedgwick. ‘The earliest baptismal records of 
the place were likely taken to Chattanooga by Father 
Brown, who resided there, for those now at Knoxville 
begin only with September 29, 1855; and the number 
who received the sacrament between that time and the 
close of the next year show that Catholicity made rather 
fair progress in Knoxville at this juncture. Doubtless 


16 Thomas L. Fossick was born at Ingleton, England, in 1817. In 
1839, he married Miss Margaret Richardson at Durham. Ten years later, 
he came to America, and to Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1850. Thence he 
went into Tennessee. During the Civil War he lost practically all he 
possessed, but recuperated a snug competency afterwards. January 13, 
1887, he wrote to Father Francis T. Marron from Alabama: 

“The little stone church upon the hill was built more than thirty 
years ago. And we had a hard struggle to raise the funds necessary to 
complete it. The congregation was very small at the time, and of the 
working class of people; but all contributed as much as they were able. 
All difficulties were surmounted, and it was a very happy day for the 
little congregation when the building was completed and ready for use. 
Several of those faithful old pioneer Catholics of Knoxville are still 
members of the same congregation. May the blessing of God attend them 
forever... Nothing you could have sent me would be more highly treas- 
ured than this little picture and its accompanying inscription. While I 
live, I will ever preserve it as a memento of the past; and when I have 
passed away, I am sure it will always be cherished as a precious heirloom 
in my family” (Nashville Archives). 

Fossick died at Sheffield, Alabama, June 13, 1894, fortified by all the 
sacraments of the Church. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 493 


some of the baptisms were performed at various 
stations. 

In any case, the records of late 1855 reveal children 
of Patrick and Elizabeth (Brotherton) Dowd; John 
and Margaret Connor; Peter and Amanda (Wam- 
bell) McKieran; Patrick and Mary (McBarrens) 
Morgan; Patrick and Jane (Sheahan) Griffin; Martin 
and Bridget (Fogarty) Shea; William and Martha 
(Cochran) Philips; Thomas and Pauline (Cahill) 
Clifford; Thomas and Margaret Hogan; James and 
Mary (O’Brien) Horan; and William and Mary 
(Flemming) Fitzgerald. ‘The sponsors, leaving out 
names already mentioned, were Peter Joyce; Bern- 
ard D. and Bridget Dolan; Christopher Dillon; 
Catherine, Nicholas and Mary Lyons; Edward and 
Anna Morgan; Thomas Carroll and Catherine Curry; 
Michael Connor; Mary Leary; Patrick Welch; Daniel 
Brenahan; Margaret Kennedy; John McGrath; and 
Elizabeth Curry. 

Throughout the next year baptisms were still more 
frequent; for the records show children of John and 
Mary Ferriter; Jeremiah and Sarah (Hembree) Col- 
lins; Patrick and Jane (Lee) Collins; Patrick and 
Elisa (Cobel) Clifford; John D. and Elizabeth 
(Moran) Manning; Denis and Helen Sullivan; Cor- 
nelius and Elisa (Gillin) Armstrong; Jeremiah and 
Catherine (McGettigan) Sykes; John and Hugenia 
(Rorke) Daley; Patrick and Elizabeth (Vane) Cotter; 
John and Mary (Tilden) Pedele; Michael and 'Theresa 
(Jenkins) Mulholland; Michael and Anna (Ody) 
Haloran; Patrick and Rachael (Body) Connor; 
Thomas and Elizabeth (Body) Harringham; Michael 
and Jane (Boler) Kem; Thomas and Mary (Shea- 


494 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


han) Casey; Thomas and Elizabeth Farrell; Daniel 
and Mary (Martin) Sullivan; John and Anna 
(McGinley) O’ Keefe. 

The above baptisms were adminstered in the first 
half of the year. ‘Those which follow occurred in the 
last six months of 1856, and were conferred upon the 
sons and daughters of Michael and Catherine (McDon- 
ald) Murphy; Timothy and Bridget (Sullivan) De- 
vine; Thomas and Mary (Connell) Sheahan; Patrick 
and Mary (Daley) Carney; John and Jane (Burke) 
Breene; Maurice and Margaret (Lawne) Dolan; 
Michael and Mary (Wall) Nem; Jefferson and Della- 
lion (Wright) Germam; Charles J. and Susan (Boyer) 
Schrend; Jerome and Henrietta J. (Wetzell) Erhart; 
John and Honora (Davis) Shea; Cornelius and Mar- 
garet (Cantillon) Wrenn; Timothy and Mary 
(McCarthy) Dargan; Patrick and Honora (Connell) 
Donaghue; Daniel and Catherine (Rice) Lyons; Wil- 
liam and Margaret (Oaks) Keegan; John and Anna 
(Connell) Fitzgerald; Patrick and Catherine (Sull- 
van) Donaghue; Michael and Margaret (Ryan) Lar- 
kin; John and Bridget (Wrenn) Callahan; William 
and Honora (Nolan) Joy; Patrick J. and Sarah C. 
(Starms) Duane; Thomas and Jane (Coleman) Sul- 
livan; and John and Bridget (Keilly) Nichols.” 

Of the same character are the sponsors’ names 
throughout the year—nearly all not only distinctively 
Irish, but also distinctively Catholic Irish, as ‘were 
many of the early settlers in eastern Tennessee. Doubt- 
less these too, like their predecessors, would have lost 

17 Owing to Father Biemans’ lack of familiarity with English and Irish 


names, and the difficulty of deciphering his handwriting, there are doubtless 
some errors in the above list of names. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 495 


the faith had not Bishop Miles been able to furnish 
them, though insufficiently, with priests. Before ground 
was secured for a church, the visiting missionary said 
mass in the homes of the faithful, among which were 
those of Daniel Lyons and Thomas Fossick.** While 
the structure was under way, a small house which stood 
on the same lot served for that purpose. But, Father 
Francis Marron assures us, “it was not unusual then 
for Parson [William G.] Brownlow [editor of the 
Knoxville Whig| to come around for the purpose of 
provoking the workmen [on the church], and to show 
his friends where his Satanic Majesty would stand in 
taking observations.” ” 

Doubtless among those mentioned in later pages of 
the records were some of the earliest Catholics of 
Knoxville, after the resuscitation of the faith there; 
but we had no way of ascertaining them. No doubt, 
too, a few afterwards moved on to other places, where 
they perhaps helped to sow the seed of divine truth. 
The greater number of them, however, must have re- 
mained, and their descendants are today members of 
one or the other of the city’s two flourishing parishes. 

In the southwestern corner of this grand division, 

18 By some it is stated that Daniel Lyons was a Presbyterian. But the 
frequency with which that patronymic appears on the early church records 
as godparents proves that his family at least was Catholic. Daniel Lyons 
(was it father or son?) performs that function more than once. Per- 
haps Daniel, Senior, became a convert. 

19 An autobiographic outline of Father Marron for Father Larkin 
(Nashville Archives). There are traditions that Father Patrick O’Neill of 
Charleston, or one of the two Fathers Jeremiah O’Neill of Savannah, and 
a Father Brown, different from Father H. V. Brown, visited Knoxville. 
This is probably true of one of the O’Neills, though his visit was likely 
at a later date than that given. But there seems to have been no other 


Father Brown who could have made his way into Tennessee at this early 
date. 


496 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


> 


“East Tennessee,” is situated one of the state’s most 
historic, interesting, and scenic cities, which began with 
the ferry and warehouse of a half-blood Indian, John 
Ross. ‘This circumstance, at first, gave it the name of 
Ross’ Landing, where we find Bishop Miles and Father 
Durbin in the fall of 1838. Two hundred and fifty 
acres were then being laid off in town lots, an enter- 
prise no doubt inspired by the hopes held out by the 
prospective approach of railroads already under way, 
and the advantageous location of the incipient village. 
In 1841, the name Ross’ Landing gave place to the 
more euphonious one of Chattanooga.”° 

The visit of Bishop Miles and Father Durbin 
suggests that there were Catholics in the locality at 
the time. Besides, among those interested in the town 
from its start were John Keeney, Allen Kennedy, and 
A. S. Lenoir, names strongly indicative of the Catholic 
faith. Whether they professed it or not is another 
question. In 1841, Father Maguire made Chattanooga 
a center of missionary activity. Father Jacquet, who 
succeeded him, did the same; while Father Brown, one 
of Tennessee’s most noted early missionaries, whether 
in point of zeal or years of service, spent by far the 
greater part of his priestly life there. Maguire certainly 
built a little temporary church in the vicinity of the city 
as early as 1841, which was the first Catholic house of 
prayer in eastern Tennessee.’ The three planted with 
great care the seed of faith which has eventually grown 
into Chattanooga’s present large and flourishing parish. 

20 Catholic Advocate, December 7, 1838; ParKMAN, Chattanooga, Ten- 
nessee, Hamilton County, and Lookout Mountain, pp. 5-6. See notes 4, 
5, and 6 of Chapter XIV. 


21 PARKMAN, op. cit., p. 5 and passim; Catholic Advocate, October 2, 
1841. See end of Chapter XV. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 497 


Father Jacquet seems to have had one book of 
records for all his missions which he retained for him- 
self, after Father Brown succeeded him at Chattanooga, 
and which in all likelihood is now lost. Facts, in its 
issues of August 4 and 18, 1894, tells us that, in May, 
1847, Father Jacquet baptized Helen Deady in the 
neighborhood of Chattanooga; but there can be no 
doubt that he also baptized a number in the city both 
before and after that date. The earliest baptism now 
on record at Saints Peter and Paul’s is that of Mary 
Ellen, daughter of John and Margaret Fitzgibbon. 
The date was February 10, 1852. James Cleary and 
Fillen Kiley acted as godparents; Father Brown 
administered the sacrament. | 

Then follow in order, during this year (1852), all 
by Father Brown, the baptisms of the children of John 
and Melvina Richardson; John and Mary Driscoll; 
Peter and Bridget Moran; Patrick and Ellen Kiley; 
Patrick and Margaret Farrell; Thomas and Jane 
McGovern; John and Helen Ahern; John and Mar- 
garet Myers; Daniel and Soethe M. Crowley; Terence 
and Elizabeth Slattery; James and Catherine Curtain; 
Hugh and Catherine Easley; Patrick and Ellen Boyle: 
Michael and Catherine Bohen; Denis and Catherine 
Sullivan; Thomas and Mary Boyle; and William and 
Margaret Sandrigan. 

Among the sponsors of the time were Patrick and 
Catherine Sheahan; Patrick and Roger Sullivan; 
Michael and Bridget Doheny; Michael and Margaret 
Gibbons; William Stewart; Thomas Kediam and Mar- 
garet Dillon; David Coleman and Mary Cleary;. Hugh 
Easley and wife Margaret; Margaret Hagerty; James 
and Margaret O’Connor; John Hannon; Timothy 


55) 


498 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Carroby and Mary Daly; William Harnett; Patrick 
Easley; Thomas and Mary Bolen; Michael Gary; 
Denis and Mary Shea; and Patrick Keenan and Anna 
Fahey. 

Still others who seem to have been in the city at this 
time, or to have arrived shortly afterwards, were 
Martin and Catherine (Dwyer) Hussey; Patrick 
Cotter and his wife Elizabeth; Mrs. Honora (Cotter) 
Crimmins; James and Bridget (McCarthy) Cotter; 
Patrick and Bridget (O’Donnell) Nelligan; Patrick 
and Ellen (Driscoll) Garvin; and James and Margaret 
(McCarthy) Sullivan.**> Daniel Hogan and an Italian 
by the name of Herlini played important parts in the 
construction of Chattanooga’s second church. Nor 
should we forget Colonels Joseph J. Griffin and James 
Whiteside who, even though the latter was not of the 
faith, largely donated to Bishop Miles a splendid 
property whereon to erect a suitable Catholic temple of 
worship in the city.”* 

From Facts we learn that Father Jacquet said mass 
in a hall on the second story of the “Bryant Building, 
on Market Street, near the river,” and at times in the 
house of Michael Harrington, “near the foot of Came- 
ron Hill”; that Joseph Ruohs was one of those who 

22 The researches of Miss Nora Crimmins of the Public Library, Chat- 
tanooga, were of great aid in unearthing some of these names. She 
believes, and in this she seems to be supported by records in the court- 
house, that John and Catherine (Finukin) McMahon, Myles Kelly, An- 
drew Warren, James and Robert Hickson, Mrs Ellen (Maguire) Fawkes, 
Patrick Hughes, and a few other Catholic individuals came to the city 
about this time. 

23 The Advertiser as quoted by the Freeman’s Journal of May 28, 1854. 
Griffin’s deed to Miles is dated January 9, 1857 (Recorder’s Office, Chat- 
tanooga, Deed Book L 1, 310). Possibly the land was not deeded over 


until all the money ($1,000) was paid; though the bishop seems certainly 
to have had possession several years earlier. 








REV. JOHN M. JACQUET : REV. HENRY V. BROWN 


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SAINTS PETER AND PAUL’S CHURCH 


CHATTANOOGA’S SECOND CHURCH, AND TWO OF ITS EARLIEST 
MISSIONARIES 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 499 


attended divine service in these places; and that the 
first Catholic church in Chattanooga was erected on a 
lot of Harrington, on Pine Street, close to his house. 
But the fact that the Almanac places the city among 
the stations attended by Father Jacquet as early as 
1848 makes Father Walsh’s statement that the mis- 
sionary said mass in Chattanooga for the first time in 
1850 open to question. 

Records of the Hamilton County court-house sub- 
stantiate the old tradition that Father Brown, acting 
under the direction of Bishop Miles, secured a great deal 
of land on “Branham Hill” which he sold to Catholics 
at cost price in order to keep them in Chattanooga and 
have them locate near the church. Father Walsh 
(Facts, August 4, 1894) also says that Father Brown 
erected the first Catholic temple of prayer in the city; 
yet one can not easily suppress the suspicion that this 
honor belongs to Father Jacquet, for he was an active 
man, and had spent several years in and around Chat- 
tanooga before the arrival of the artist priest. To the 
writer it seems quite probable that the little church on 
Mr. Harrington’s lot was the work of the French 
missionary. 

Besides, it appears to be understood that there was 
a church in Chattanooga in 1852; while, in a letter of 
September 7, 1852, Bishop Miles says Father Brown 
“is preparing to build a church. ... and is entirely 
absorbed in his grand undertaking.” This was cer- 
tainly the frame structure on a stone foundation, which 
stood on A Street, where now stands the sisters’ 
convent; and which an April or May issue of the 
Chattanooga Advertiser in 1854 shows had then made 


500 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


little progress.** In any case, Facts informs us that the 


French missionary built a little fane near “Cumberland 
Tunnel,” which was burned on October 22, 1850. ‘The 
names of neither of these ambassadors of Christ should 
ever be forgotten in Hamilton and the adjacent 
counties. 

This brings us to what is known as “West Tennes- 
see.” After the departure of Father McAleer, that 
vast division of the state fell entirely to the care of the 
sons of Saint Dominic, who were then practically its 
sole missionaries for twenty years. Faithful were they 
to their duty; ceaselessly did they toil. While there 
were certainly others, the only stations mentioned in 
the Almanac as attended from Memphis were Jackson, 
Madison County; Somerville and La Grange, Fayette 
County; Bolivar, Hardeman County; and Savannah, 
on the eastern bank of the Tennessee River, in Hardin 
County. 

With the exception of Bolivar and Jackson, we did 
not discover the names of any of the Catholics in these 
places. Bolivar’s most noted family of the faith was 
that of the Barrys, the head of which would seem to 
have been Valentine D. and Mary (Adams) Barry. 
Their sons Daniel, William, and Arthur became news- 
paper men who left their impress upon the state. 
Possibly it was Valentine, the father, who visited 
Bishop Kenrick in Philadelphia, about 1832, to see if 
he could not send a priest to Tennessee. It appears that 
there were also some families by the name of Moore, 
Grace, Sterling, Arthur, Lee, and Collins at Bolivar, 


24 See preceding note for the Advertiser and note 19 of Chapter XIX 
for Bishop Miles’ letter. 





RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 501 


or in the neighborhood.”” The elder Barry was a circuit 
judge, and died in Memphis. 

Jackson, it is of record, had but few Catholics. 
Five of the families were those of James Hughes, 
George and Lydia (Armour) Jenkins, and John, 
Michael, and Philip Magevney. Another seems to 
have had the name of Meechim. ‘The Catholic Alma- 
nac of 1844 says that half of the little congregation were 
converts; while we have in hand a statement which 
tells us that the convert wives of John Magevney, 
George Jenkins, and James Hughes were confirmed 
by Bishop Miles in 1842. Jenkins was a native of 
Baltimore. The others came from Ireland.” 

As Memphis, or the “Bluff City,” owes its existence 
largely to the energy, foresight, and ability of Judge 
John Overton, so Saint Peter’s Church is in no small 
measure indebted to the business acumen of his kinsman 
and the executor of his will, John 8S. Claybrook, for 
its erection. Father Stokes’ letters have told us of the 
good spirit and liberality of the enlightened non-Cath- 
olics there. However, with this was certainly mixed 
the desire to hasten and solidify the city’s growth by 
encouraging Catholics to settle in it through the posses- 
sion of a church under the auspices of their faith. 
There can be no doubt that this idea had its force in 
the warm reception given Bishop Miles and Fathers 
Stokes and Clancy on their first appearance on the 
Mississippi, or in the generosity shown in their cause, 
of which we have soon to speak. 

25 Notes of Father Walsh (Nashville Archives). 


26 Father Walsh as in preceding note, and Saint Peter’s records, Mem- 
phis. 


502 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Stokes has told us of Patrick McKeon, 
Eugene Magevney, Patrick R. Kenna, and M. Lan- 
gan, whom he met at Memphis in November, 1839, and 
of the interest they took in the erection of a church. 
On the same occasion, the records at Nashville show, 
he baptized at Memphis children of Basil and Catherine 
(Spaeh) Rapp; Michael and Mary (Murphy) Leon- 
ard; Patrick R. and Henrietta Bordley; and William 
and Pauline (Phiphs) Prince. ‘The sponsors were 
Francis Scheller, Balina Prince, Catherine Calfield, 
P. McKeon, and Sophia Phobus. 

However, there must have been a few of the faith 
in the Bluff City years before the arrival of these. At 
least, Patrick Meagher, the proprietor of the Old Bell 
Tavern and a friend of Andrew Jackson; “Squire” 
McMahon, engaged in the same business; Margaret 
Grace; Thomas B. Carr; John W. Fowler; John R. 
Dougherty; and half a dozen others similar in character, 
which one meets with in the early annals of the town, 
are names almost as distinctively Catholic as significa- 
tively Irish. Doubtless though we have here, in the case 
of some, the same sad story which one finds wherever 
there were no priests—defections from the religion of 
their forefathers. 

Father Clancy’s records can not be found, but it is 
known that he married Eugene Magevney and Mary 
Smyth on May 31, 1840. ‘This was perhaps the first 
Catholic ceremony of the kind in Memphis. It took 
place in the Magevney home, which still stands on 
Adams Avenue, near Saint Peter’s church.** Father 

27 Statement of Mrs. Catherine Hamilton, their daughter (Nashville 


Archives). One also reads this in practically every account of the early 
Church in Memphis. 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 503 


Clancy seems to have had no home of his own, and he 
said mass in the houses of the faithful—among them 
that of Kugene Magevney. Tradition says that he usu- 
ally offered the sacred mysteries in the homestead of 
this Irish school-teacher, where a mahogany bureau may 
still be seen which served as an altar. 

Father McAleer’s first recorded baptism was that of 
Mary, the first child of Mr. and Mrs. Magevney, who 
aftewards became a Dominican Sister. The date was 
February 24, 1841. Other baptisms in the same year, 
omitting those that appear to have been administered 
in Jackson and names already mentioned, were of the 
children of Edward and Drusilla (Cherry) Read; John 
and Margaret (Clancy) Conaghan; Thomas and Cath- 
erine (McCabe) Hogan; James and Mary (Gorman) 
Green; William and Margaret (Brady) McKeon; 
James and Mary (Warfel) McNamee; John and Mar- 
garet (Poland) Burke; and James and Annora (Hoo- 
ligan) Nugent. The sponsors were Joseph A. White, 
Catherine Shaller, William and Mary (Dunn) Eng- 
lish, James Kennedy and wife, Mary Larkin, William 
Bradshaw, Mary Conaghan, Patrick McKeon, Patrick 
Farrell, Michael Gaffney and wife, James and Mary 
(Quinn) O’Brien, Robert Burke, Mrs. Michael Kiely, 
and a Mr. Jones. 

Again avoiding a repetition of names, the parents 
of 1842 were Frederic and Margaret (Bonninger) 
Udwig; Michael and Bridget (Handlon) Power; 
William and Mary (Quinlan) Irwin; Michael B. and 
Margaret (Murphy) Martin; Francis and Bridget 
(Foley) Coffey; John and Bridget (O’Connor) Burke; 
M. and Mary Agnes (Snyder) Miller; and Rudolph 
and Elizabeth (Armstrong) Davis. Among the god- 


504 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


parents were Patrick Golden, Mrs. Davern, Thomas 
Costigan, Bridget Powers, Denis Kerby, Mary McCar- 
thy, Thomas McKeon, John McMahon, Mary Haley, 
Bridget Archer, John Carroll, Joseph C. and Mary 
Ursula Snyder, Michael McNamara, Ann Reagan, and 
Peter Connolly and wife. 

Father McAleer had all preparations made for the 
purchase of a lot when Bishop Miles returned from 
Europe. The anxious prelate therefore hurried off to 
Memphis, where he received a deed from John Clay- 
brook on October 29, 1841.°° Again the enlightened 
non-Catholics showed their good will; for, in a little 
book used alike to record the payment of pew-rent and 
to keep accounts for the erection of the sacred edifice, 
we read: | 

The Committee deem it a pleasing duty to record this, on the 
very liminal of their official proceedings—the magnanimous fact 
that the Church lot ,was in part donated to our Bishop for the 
Catholic congregation worshipping at Memphis, by the acting 
agent (Mr. Claybrook) of the heirs of Judge Overton’s estate, 
the nominal price required by the agent being five hundred dollars, 
which our Protestant brethren very generously paid, as shown by 
the annexed list.?9 

Unfortunately this list of contributors is no longer 
in the record. However, the accounts show that work 
was soon under way for building the temple of the 
Lord. Patrick McKeon, James Kennedy, Eugene 
Magevney, and M. Langan were appointed a com- 
mittee for the people. Doubtless Kennedy took the 
place of Patrick Kenna, who had held that position in 
1839, but who had likely left the city after the death of 
his young convert wife. Father McAleer himself 


28 Photostat copy (Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province). 
29 Records of Saint Peter’s. 


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RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 505 


headed the committee, as well as had charge of all 
matters appertaining to the structure. In the Memphis 
Appeal of May 13, 1842, he issued the following 
notice: 

Sealed proposals will be received, from the 16th to the 24th 
of May, for the Brick and Carpenter work of a Catholic Church 
to be built in Memphis, agreeably to the plan and specifications 
to be seen at Rev. Mr. McAleer’s office, opposite the City Hotel. 
Proposals to be deposited in the Post Office, addressed to 

M. McAleer. 


The building accounts extend over twenty-two pages, 
run from April 17, 1842, to June 20, 1844, and show 
that Father McAleer’s task was by no means without 
difficulties. Between fifty and sixty new names are 
revealed in these pages, the greater number of whom 
were doubtless Catholics. Henry and William Irwin 
had the contract for the woodwork; the firm of Hickman 
and Austin received that for the masonry. D. Morison 
was the architect. 

Simultaneously with the church, which faced on 
Third Street, Father McAleer built a rectory. This 
stood at the rear of the church, fronted on Adams 
Avenue, cost one hundred and seventy dollars, and is 
said to have been almost a counterpart of Hugene 
Magevney’s home.*” Until his own house was finished, 
he probably lived in that in which he had his office, oppo- 
site the City liotel.** Before the church was ready 
for use, he no doubt said mass at Magevney’s and in the 
domiciles of other Catholics, if not in some hall rented 

30 We have frequently heard Mrs. Catherine Hamilton and other old 
people speak of the location and appearance of the first Catholic rectory 
in Memphis. It was not taken down until 1872. 

31 The City Hotel seems to have stood on Winchester Avenue, between 


Main and Front streets; and across from it there were some residences. 
Doubtless Father McAleer lived in one of these. 


506 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


for the purpose on Sundays. The impression made on 
the public by Father McAleer may be gaged by the 
American Eagle of August 12, 1842. In an article 
entitled “The Memphis Churches’, the editor of that 
paper states: 

The Roman Catholics are building a handsome brick Cathedral, 
and they have already quite a congregation. The officiating Priest 
is said to be a gentleman of learning and talents—but the Roman 
Catholics never stick asses in their pulpits—and we hope of piety 
also. They bid fair to have a flourishing church. 


Hardly, however, was the modest temple of the Lord 
far enough advanced for divine service to be held within 
its walls, before the continual increase in the number 
of faithful showed that Father McAleer had miscal- 
culated its size, and that the time was not far distant 
when a larger edifice would be needed. No doubt this 
was one of the reasons why he did not erect the spire 
which he had planned, or even have the church formally 
dedicated. 

Scarcely had’ the Dominicans taken spiritual charge 
of Memphis, when they were confronted with the 
question whether they should enlarge Saint Peter’s, or 
build another church. Money was scarce; as a rule, 
the new Catholics had acquired little of the world’s 
goods; those not of the faith felt that they had done 
their share. This situation rendered the erection of a 
new edifice so soon after the first practically prohibitive. 
On the other hand, the fathers felt that an addition to 
the old would solve their problem for only a short time, 
and in the end greatly increase the burden of the people 
entrusted to their care. 

For these reasons, it was determined to proceed with 
the dedication of the church, leaving matters in statu 


RESUME—PERSONS AND PLACES 507 


quo for a few years more. Meanwhile, the flock grew 
steadily. Among the most noted additions, tradition 
tells us, was a nephew of Bishop Miles—Doctor George 
Murphy, who was not less faithful as a Catholic than 
successful as a physician.** Finally, May 25, 1852, 
Father Grace had the following notice inserted in the 
Daily Eagle and Enqurer: “To Brick Masons :—Pro- 
posals will be received for the Brick Masonry of a 
Catholic Church, to be built in the city of Memphis, 
agreeably to the plans and specifications to be seen at 
the office of the Rev. T. L. Grace, in the rear of the 
Catholic Church, Adams Street. Proposals desired 
immediately.” 

In like manner, the Catholic Telegraph of Cincin- 
nati, in its issue of December 18, 1852, tells its readers: 
“The Catholics of Memphis, Tennessee, are about to 
erect one of the most splendid edifices west of the Alle- 
ghanies.... It is to have two towers, each one 
hundred feet high, surmounted by a chime of bells.” 
But to tell of the progress, final completion, dedication, 
and beauty of the new Saint Peter’s will fall to the final 
chapter. 

32 The Catholic Advocate of January 24, 1846, notes the marriage of 
“Dr. George Murphy of Memphis, Tennessee, to Miss Mary Ann McManus 


of Bardstown,” Kentucky, in the latter place on January 15. Doubtless he 
went to his former home to marry a sweetheart of his earlier days. 


CHAPTER XXI 
VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 


It was doubtless immediately after his installation 
that, as an apparently authentic tradition tells us, 
Bishop Miles went to board at the hospitable home of 
Philip Callaghan, which stood on Market Street (the 
present Second Avenue), near the corner of Church 
Street. But he soon rented a house from one Dough- 
erty, possibly the William Dougherty mentioned in the 
previous chapter. Here most likely it was that he fell 
sick in the fall of 1839, and received the last sacraments 
from Father Stokes. This building stood on the same 
street, then one of the nicest thoroughfares in the city, 
as that of Callaghan, but farther to the north.’ 

Here also was the holy man’s stay of short duration, 
for he wanted a place of his own, wherein he would feel 
less fettered for the work of God. Accordingly, as soon 
as he received his first aid from the providential Society 
for the Propagation of the Faith—just before he 
started on his journey for Europe—he purchased a 
large lot from James and William Park. It fronted 
on the west side of Market Street, near Whiteside. 
On it evidently stood a commodious house, which was 
at once converted into a residence for the bishop and 
Father Stokes, no less than into a little seminary, since 

1 Notes of the Rev. William Walsh, after talks with Mrs. Mary (Ken- 


ney) Dougherty (Nashville Archives) ; Ropert, Nashville and Her Trade 
for 1870, p. 452. 


508 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 509 


such an institution appeared imperatively necessary 
that the diocese might be supplied with priests.* 

Two more adjacent purchases, one from the same 
parties immediately after his return from abroad, and 
the other from Joseph B. Knowles and William 
Boswith, early in 1843, extended the diocesan property 
from Market Street on the west to Water Street (now 
First Avenue) on the east; while it stretched fromi 
Whiteside on the north to perhaps Locust on the south.* 
Considering the times, the bishop’s poverty, the price 
paid for the holdings, and other circumstances, it was a 
bold venture which required a brave heart. A con- 
tributor to the Nashville Herald of January 12, 1890, 
tells us that the entire tract contained ten acres, and 
that it lay in the heart of what was then Nashville’s 
finest residential section. Here Bishop Miles hoped 
to erect a cathedral, seminary, and college, in all of 
which he had the hearty sympathy of the city’s most 
representative citizens, whether non-Catholics or those 
of his own faith. 

Doubtless the man of God would have preferred 
to protect his seminarians with the quiet of a life in the 
country, but he had neither the means nor the clergy 
necessary for so many separate institutions. Besides, 
he wished to have the young aspirants to the priesthood 
near himself that he might keep a more constant eye 
on their training, whilst they could lend added solemnity 
to the services in the cathedral and give a helping hand 

2Father Stokes to Bishop Purcell, December 27, 1839 (Cincinnati Ar- 
chives) ; same to the editor of the Catholic Advocate, February 19, 1840— 
copied in the U. S. C. Miscellany of April 4, 1840; Deed Book II, 459- 
460, Recorder’s Office, Nashville. 


3 Deed Book IV, 412-413; V, 23-24; and VI, 21-22, Recorder’s Office, 
Nashville; Nashville Herald, January 12, 1890. 


510 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


in the college. All these proposed structures he 
intended to make the grandest within his power, for he 
well knew the love of the southern people for the beau- 
tiful, and felt that in no other way could he more surely 
win their esteem, and perhaps predispose them to con- 
version. 

Hardly, however, were his purchases completed 
before the likelihood of the encroachment of railroads 
and other public utilities on that part of the city began 
to loom large. He therefore secured other property for 
a cathedral. Nor was the wisdom of the step slow to 
become manifest; yet this change of plan, imposed by 
necessity, brought many inconveniences, greatly in- 
creased the burden of the bishop’s indebtedness, and 
seriously interfered with his efforts for good, if it did 
not even retard the growth of Catholicity in Tennessee 
by shortening the means for its advancement. Thus, 
although the first location, at the time it was bought, 
appeared to be one of the best adapted for his purposes 
that he could select, the choice, through the civic devel- 
opment, proved unfortunate. 

At any rate, our apostle now had no alternative but 
to leave his treasured seminary where it was, or to close 
it and sell the property at a sacrifice which he could not 
afford. Accordingly, he retained his residence, which 
stood at 110-114 North Market Street, where he con- 
tinued his efforts to educate young men for the diocese.* 
Fathers Morgan, Hoste, Alemany, and Jacquet were 
successively the superiors of the seminarians. All lived 
with the pious bishop, who, as occasion permitted, not 
infrequently aided with the teaching. Tradition tells 


4 City Directories of 1853-1854, 1855-1856, 1857. 
5 See the Catholic Almanacs from 1841 to 1848. 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 511 


us that Father Montgomery also often gave a helping 
hand, and at times acted as superior. Father Schacht 
seems to have played a similar part. 

Just when the little seminary was definitely closed 
we did not ascertain. It involved almost heroic sacri- 
fice and hardship. Fathers O’Dowde, Howard, and 
Schacht appear to have been the only priests ordained 
from it. Yet there are clear indications that a number 
of others tried their vocations there, and proofs that 
Bishop Miles would ordain only those who showed 
evident signs of possessing such a sturdy character as 
would enable them to persevere on the trying missions 
of the diocese. More than one eveat, with a few lines 
of recommendation (for his letters were ever brief), 
reveal a student sent to other parts, where he became a 
successful harvester of souls. 

Mention of Saint Athanasius’ Seminary does not 
appear in the Almanac after 1848. Doubtless, in view 
of the results, Bishop Miles concluded that the candle 
was not worth the flame, for the money and labor 
devoted to the institution might yield richer fruits of 
religion in other fields. However, it deserves this fuller 
notice not only because it reveals a noble effort for the 
good of souls, but also because it was really the only 
diocesan seminary ever in Tennessee.° 

Catholic education was a topic in which the subject 
of our narrative took the keenest interest. As the reader 
will recall, one of the first things he did, after regaining 
his health and the arrival of Father Stokes, was to 
establish a school. ‘Tradition tells us that it was first 
started in the little frame building which stood beside 


6 Father Stokes’ letter to the Advocate, as in note 2, and the Almanacs 
of 1841 and 1842 show that the seminary was called Saint Joseph’s at first. 


512 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Holy Rosary Cathedral on Capitol Hull; but on his 
return from abroad the bishop erected a larger structure 
of the same material near his residence, and removed 
the classes thither. It stood at 122 North Market 
Street. The seminarians are said to have been the 
principal teachers, at the start at least; yet the priests 
also gave a part of their time to this work. 

The Catholic Almanac for 1843 states: “Attached 
to the seminary is an academy for boys, in which, besides 
mathematics and the ordinary branches of a good 
English education, the Greek, Latin, Italian, French 
and Spanish languages are carefully taught. The 
religious instruction of Catholic pupils only is attended 
to, and every facility [is] afforded for the improvement 
of the mind and the cultivation of virtue. The academy 
is conducted by ecclesiastics under the superinten- 
dence of the Rev. Superior of the seminary.” ‘The 
Almanac for 1844 tells us practically the same, except 
that it states the institution “is conducted by clergymen 
and seminarists under the direction of the Right Rev. 
Bishop Miles.” * 

It would seem that about this time the zealous prelate 
must have made a suggestion that the Jesuits Fathers 
in Kentucky should take over his college; but, after a 
consultation with him, they felt that Nashville did not 
hold out a sufficiently good prospect of success.’ Early 
in the same year (1844), either Father Edward Sorin 
offered of his own accord to let him have some Brothers 
of the Holy Cross, then called the Brothers of Saint 
Joseph, for his parochial school, or gave a favorable 

7 Directories as in note 4. 


8 Almanac for 1843, pp. 105-106; for 1844, p. 144. 
9 THEBAUD, Three Quarters of a Century, III, 264. 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS ap ie 


reply to an appeal for such aid. In any case, on the 
ninth of April, that year, the sorely tried bishop wrote 
to Father Sorin: 

Your favour of the 5th ult. came to hand in due time, the 
acknowledgment of which has been delayed for some time in con- 
sequence of my absence from home. I have long wished to have 
some of the Brothers of St. Joseph in my Diocese, and am glad 
to indulge the hope that my wish may be realized. Should it be 
possible to send me some, please inform me in order that I may 
make preparations for them. I will cheerfully bear their travelling 
expenses and give the annual pension you demand. . . .1° 

Then he answers some questions asked by Father 
Sorin, and closes his letter with these words: “I am 
decidedly of the opinion that this excellent institute 
should not be confined to any one place, but that it 
should be spread as widely as possible, convinced that 
the most beneficial results will follow from it.” Eyvi- 
dently, these fair prospects gave Bishop Miles much 
pleasure, which perhaps made his disappointment all 
the keener. December 15, 1844, he wrote another letter 


to Father Sorin, in which he says: 

Some time in the spring you honoured me with a letter respecting 
the institution over which you preside, and gave me hopes that 
I should be able to obtain two of the Brothers of St. Joseph for 
Nashville. I immediately replied, and expressed my wishes to 
have them, since which I have heard nothing on the subject. I 
would consider it a great favour, if you would be kind enough, at 
your first leisure, to drop me a line stating whether I may hope 
to have the aid of those good Brothers! 

Doubtless Father Sorin thought it unwise to accept 
a place so far from home which could support only two 


brothers. ‘Thus Bishop Miles was obliged to conduct 
10 Notre Dame Archives. 


11 Jbid. Evidently the bishop had forgotten the delay in his reply caused 
by absence from home. 


34 


514 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


his school with a secular staff. The college, or “male 
academy,” ceased with the close of the seminary; for, 
without the aid of ecclesiastical students, his limited 
means rendered it impossible to carry it on any longer. 
However, the building was at once turned into a private 
school for the sons of the better-to-do Catholics who did 
not wish to send their children to the more common 
parochial school. 

Despite the failures of Bishops Flaget and Rosati 
along the same line under far more favorable auspices, 
Bishop Miles now assayed the establishment of an order 
of teaching brothers, whom he called the Brothers of 
Saint Patrick. ‘This was hoping almost against hope. 
Still his private school prospered under this tentative 
religious institute for five or six years later. Then, 
principally for want of vocations, the brothers dis- 
banded. Somewhat later, September 4, 1854, the 
anxious prelate wrote a letter of strong appeal to Bishop 
Spalding to let him have a few members of the newly 
established ‘Xaverian Brothers who had come from 
Belgium, so that he might place them in charge of his 
private school. As none could be spared, the holy man 
was again obliged to engage secular teachers.” 

Nevertheless, the Father of the Church in Tennessee 
managed to keep this school going in a most creditable 
manner until his death. The early Nashville Directories 
tell their readers: “Bishop Miles’ school is ably con- 
ducted.” ** Under his watchful care, it could hardly 
have been otherwise. ‘Tradition informs us that men 
of note in every profession were either wholly educated 
in his college, or started on their way of success in his 


12 Louisville Archives. 
13 See note four. 








VERY REV. REV. JAMES A. ORENGO, 
SAMUEL L. MONTGOMERY, O. P. 


Oe R 





REV. JOHN A. LYNCH, REV. JANUARIUS M. D’ARCO, 
One, O. P. 


FOUR OF THE FRIAR-PREACHER MISSIONARIES IN NASHVILLE AND 
MIDDLE TENNESSEE UNDER BISHOP MILES 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS at Ie 


private school. Both rendered invaluable services to 
religion. 

After the establishment of the new community of 
sisters, these taught the children of both sexes of the 
poorer classes in the “spacious’”’ rooms under the cathe- 
dral, as well as took care of the wealthier girls in Saint 
Mary’s Academy. Again the city Directories assure 
us: “The Sisters of Charity, laborious and _ self-sacri- 
ficing, are doing much to educate the poor.” The 
bishop, however, paid these laborers their salaries; for, 
as a just man, he saw that every toiler received his 
wages—would permit no meritorious deed to go unre- 
quited. 

Indeed, the charity of Christ urged His ambassador 
ever onward. It is this that explains his efforts in 
behalf of the colored people. Few of his contemporary 
bishops seem to have taken so keen an interest in that 
race. Throughout his episcopate, that their lives might 
thus be rendered happier, no less than that their souls 
might profit therefrom, he sought to gather around 
him the few free colored people in Nashville, and as 
many of the slaves as their masters would allow such 
a privilege, to give them a rudimentary education, teach 
them to sing, and instruct them in the principles of 
Christian doctrine. First, according to tradition, he 
used the old frame church on the hill for this noble 
purpose. Afterwards, they were brought to his own 
house (where the people long attended mass on week 
days), taken to the cathedral basement, or collected 
wherever he could find a place for them. Really his 
efforts in this regard amounted to, as they were called, 
a “free colored school.” ™* 


14 Catholic Almanac, year after year. 


516 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Father Hoste went to reside at Saint Michael’s, 
Robertson County, in 1846. Shortly afterwards, under 
the instructions of his bishop, this saintly priest and 
lover of children erected a building and opened a board- 
ing school in order to accommodate parents who could 
not afford to patronize an expensive institution. Both 
boys and girls were admitted here, but they had separate 
quarters. A matron looked after the girls. Gustave 
Bouchard, whom Father Hoste seems to have brought 
over from France for that purpose in 1847, took charge 
of the boys. Father Hoste exercised a supervision over 
all; nor did anything escape the watchful, yet kindly, 
care of the general director, who, as his time permitted, 
also took part in the teaching. Here, too, orphan boys 
were collected and taken care of until good homes were 
found for them, or they were able to provide for them- 
selves.*° 

This institution continued until the stress of mission- 
ary work and the bishop’s finances obliged him to close 
it. This was about 1855, when the Sisters of Charity 
opened a new house in the country, a few miles from 
Nashville. The boys’ orphan asylum was then trans- 
ferred to this place."° During the eight or nine 
years of its existence, Saint Michael’s Academy, as it 
was called, proved a source of wide-spread good for 
religion in the diocese. Apparently the intention was 
to suspend it only temporarily. Even this gave the 
bishop and Father Hoste no little sorrow. Father 
Hoste, it is said, hoped to do in Robertson and Sumner 
counties, ‘Tennessee, what T‘ather Demetrius Gallitzin 

15 These facts are shown by several of the Almanacs. In years past 
we met several people who had been at this school when they were chil- 


dren. They spoke of it in terms of high praise. 
16 The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, p. 28. 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 517 


had done in Cambria and the surrounding counties of 
Pennsylvania; nor did he give up the idea until the 
southland was disrupted by the Civil War.” 

Bishop Miles evidently believed in the principle that 
a full Catholic school meant full pews. One can but 
admire the anxiety with which, when there was question 
of a new church to be built, he sought to secure enough 
ground for a school in order that it might be put in 
operation as soon as the place had a resident pastor. 
Under his inspiration, Father Hoste continued a paro- 
chial school at Saint Michael’s, that in Nashville was 
conducted in the basement of the cathedral, and special 
buildings were erected for that purpose in Memphis, 
Chattanooga, and Knoxville at the earliest oppor- 
tunity.*® 

The impossibility of doing otherwise necessitated the 
employment of lay teachers in all these places except 
Nashville, after the new community of the Sisters of 
Charity had been set on its feet there. However, the 
pastors were instructed to keep a watchful eye on both 
pupils and teachers within their jurisdictions. That 
none might have an excuse for sending their children 
elsewhere our apostle insisted, despite the expense thus 
entailed when money was scarce, on these schools being 
free for all Catholics. Herein, it should be noticed, 
he set an example which is now followed by many of our 
bishops, and which the rest would like to see put into 
practice wherever feasible.” 

17 Rev. P. J. Gleason, who was once the pastor of Saint Michael’s, to 
Rey. William Walsh, May 14, 1909 (Nashville Archives). 

18 This may be seen from various sources. 

19 Brother Michael Whelan, O. P., for more than twenty years an efh- 


cient lay brother at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, was a teacher in Father 
Grace’s school at Memphis before he became a religious. He might have 


518 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


One of the great difficulties against which Bishop 
Miles had to contend, it will not have been forgotten, 
was the way in which his little flock was widely scattered 
here and there, few places having more than five or six 
families—many even a smaller number. To better this 
condition, to the end that they might be visited oftener 
by a priest, he continued his efforts to induce those so 
unfortunately situated to locate nearer one another, or 
where there was already a nucleus of faithful which 
gave better promise of soon having a church. ‘This 
mayhap explains why the Almanac occasionally drops 
a station that had been mentioned before. Certainly 
his fatherly advice was followed in some instances. 

For the same reason, the holy man centered his 
attempts to bring Catholic farmers into his diocese on 
just a few places. Perhaps Morgan County, in east 
Tennessee, Humphreys County, in middle Tennessee, 
and the vicinity of Memphis, in west ‘Tennessee, are 
the most conspicuous examples of his endeavors along 
this line. He felt, no doubt, that, if he met with success 
in these places, he could then turn his attention to other 
parts, and have a better hope of obtaining missionaries 
for their spiritual care. 

Mention has been made of the two circulating libra- 
ries established (one in Nashville and another at Saint 
Michael’s), with the many books gathered from differ- 
ent parts of Europe and America. The fathers are said 
to have had a third in Memphis, which they collected 
themselves. Bishop Miles showed no little anxiety that 
all his priests should possess a good library, and that 
they should be generous in lending books to the public. 


entered the Order as a candidate for the priesthood, but he preferred the 
more humble state of a lay brother. 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 519 


His idea in this, as regards Protestants, was to let them 
see for themselves what the Church teaches. Catholics 
he wished not only to acquire the habit of reading whole- 
some literature, but also to be able to give a reason for 
the faith which they professed. Possibly the intelligent 
Catholicity of Tennessee today is in part due to this 
apostolate of its first bishop.” 

Whilst in this, as in all other matters, we should 
take the luridly-phrased denunciations of fanatics with 
a liberal reservation, it must still be admitted that in 
times past the habit of excessive use of strong drink 
was all too common. Scarcely had Bishop Miles donned 
the miter, though himself not at all an extremist, when 
he began a kindly campaign against this vice. Tem- 
perance societies were established in the main parishes, 
with branches in the missions attended from them. 
That of the cathedral attained a membership of six 
hundred. Many and appealing were the sermons he 
preached on this subject; for he would not only safe- 
guard the souls of the faithful, but also have them set 
an example for their neighbors. 

In like manner, the man of God sought in every way 
to foster religious societies among his people. Al- 
though there is no record of it, tradition tells us that 
he had a flourishing Rosary Confraternity in the 
cathedral parish. There was another at Memphis. 
In their choice of societies, however, he seems to have 
let the pastors follow the bent of their own devotion, 
with the exception of the Sacred Heart Society and 

20 Bishop O’Finan, a Dominican who gave Bishop Miles a number of 
books, requested that those which came from him should be bequeathed 
to a house of the Order in the diocese, if there were one there; and if 


not, to Saint Joseph’s Province. Practically no trace of these libraries 
is now left. 


520 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception, 
or of the Sacred Heart of Mary, for the Conversion 
of Sinners. These two sodalities he had established in 
about every parish of the diocese. 

Bishop Miles’ devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is 
said to have been the tenderest. He loved to pray 
before his Kucharistic God. For a further proof of his 
devotion to the Blessed Virgin one has but to consider 
the fact that nearly half of the churches in the diocese 
were dedicated to the divine service under her patron- 
age. Clarksville and Sumner County and Knoxville 
had each its Church of the Immaculate Conception; 
Jackson its Saint Mary’s; Nashville its Church of the 
Assumption; the first cathedral, on Capitol Hull, was 
called the Holy Rosary; while to the second was given 
the name of the Cathedral of the Seven Dolors. It is 
noteworthy that the church at Clarksville, dedicated in 
1844, was one of the earliest in the country designated 
the Immaculate Conception. 

Nowhere in the United States were the clergy more 
overwhelmed with toil, or had less time at their disposal, 
than those of Tennessee. Yet its apostolic bishop, in 
his broad charity, not infrequently had them extend 
their missionary journeys into northern Alabama, and 
perhaps into Georgia and southern Kentucky. For 
some years Ilorence, Huntsville, Tuscumbia, and Deca- 
tur, Alabama, were attended from Nashville for Bishop 
Portier. From Memphis the Fathers of Saint Dominic 
long burdened themselves with the northwestern coun- 
ties of Mississippi and places in eastern Arkansas. 

The bishop loved the work of the confessional. 
Wherever he went, he spent hours in the sacred tribunal 
of reconciliation. Everywhere, especially in the cathe- 


VARIOUS APOSTOLIC EFFORTS 521 


dral, crowds sought his kindly ministrations there; for 
his wise guidance never failed to bring peace to the soul. 
In the pulpit, in administering the sacrament of pen- 
ance, in his conversations, he urged frequent commun- 
ion. Always did he press the faithful to subscribe for 
and to read the Catholic papers, convinced as he was 
that a knowledge of the efforts in behalf of religion in 
other parts of the country would be an incentive to a 
better life. One of his keen regrets was that he could 
not afford to have a paper for his own diocese. ‘T'radi- 
tion informs us that he published a very practical little 
catechism which long did excellent service in the state.” 

Truly the whole story of the early apostolate in 
Tennessee is one of edifying zeal, self-sacrifice, and even 
heroism. 

21 We could not discover any copy of this catechism, but the tradition 


about it is so strong that it leaves no doubt about its publication or its 
simple excellence. 


CHAPTER XXII 
THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 


Even today a traveller from another part of the 
country in the day coaches in the south is astonished 
at the frequency with which he hears the Bible and 
religion form the subject of conversation between the 
passengers. ‘The arguments are usually earnest and 
intense. This spirit was still more prevalent three 
quarters of a century ago. Doubtless Bishop Miles was 
perforce drawn into such discussions from time to time 
while on his journeys. Indeed, it has been handed down 
to us, he was often amused by this stage-coach theology, 
and deftly sought to use his superior knowledge for 
bringing those who thus approached him into the true 
Church. 

Oftener than not, however, the man of God failed in 
these zealous efforts. Nor is the reason far to seek. 
He possessed all those graces and accomplishments 
which give charm and elegance to society. As a rule, 
he found the people of 'Tennessee full of human kind- 
ness, friendly, and good neighbors. They served God 
sincerely according to their hight. They admired the 
bishop and his clergy no less for their lives than for their 
gentlemanly qualities and for their higher attainments. 
Yet, brought up as they were, these people, for the most 
part, knew the Catholic religion only through perverted 

522 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 523 


history and the popular jeremiads against the so-called 
dark ages and the Inquisition. 

Thus, although they saw that the few Catholics with 
whom they came into contact ordinarily had uncommon 
trust in God, led exemplary lives, and showed great 
devotion to their religion, as well as earnestness in its 
requirements, they (the Protestants) understood little 
about the Catholic faith. It was all but a myth to 
them—a pillar of cloud not only by day, but by night 
as well. The doctrine that Christians can get to 
heaven only by way of the cross, for that was the way 
by which our Lord and His Blessed Mother journeyed 
(and we are no better than they), did not appeal to 
them. To whatever sect they belonged, their creed was 
deeply ingrained. Under such circumstances few con- 
versions could be expected. Perhaps no one could have 
made more than did the subject of our narrative. 

This inherited religious bias combined with unscru- 
pulous politics and the greed and vaulting ambition of 
characters with little or no conscience to give birth to 
Know-nothingism, which attained the height of its 
strength and influence in 1855 and 1856, On the night 
of Christmas, 1855, adherents of that party gathered 
around the cathedral of Nashville, bent on making 
trouble for the worshippers at the midnight mass. 
Bishop Miles, having received word of these evil inten- 
tions, notified as many as he could that the mass was 
cancelled, and had some of his friends to patrol the 
streets and quietly induce all Catholics to return 
to their homes. He himself kept watch in the sacred 
edifice, and gave similar directions to those who, because 
they had not received the information, made their way 
thither. ‘The rowdies kept up a hideous uproar for a 


524 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


couple of hours, but dispersed when they discovered that 
their plot had been frustrated.* 

Franklin, Murfreesborough, Pulaski, and _ other 
places had a number of riots. Knoxville, however, 
seems to have been the greatest stronghold of Know- 
nothingism. Here Catholics, and especially those of 
Irish origin, were accorded the most shameful treat- 
ment. ‘Through all these troubles Bishop Miles kept 
in constant contact with his priests,.and it was perhaps 
through his wise guidance that much harm was pre- 
vented. 

The greatest trouble of the bishops in the east, north, 
and new west was to build churches fast enough to 
accommodate the steady influx of immigrants. ‘Ten- 
nessee’s apostle had all sorts of difficulties to face. 
Few priests were willing to bear the hardships of his 
mission. He had little means with which to erect 
needed churches, and an insufficient number of clergy 
for the care of those which he had. Throughout the 
country the growth of Catholicity was principally 
through immigration. In Tennessee immigration was 
a negligible quantity ; for the newcomers, as a rule, were 
not only opposed to the institution of Negro slavery, 
but also saw little prospect of success where they would 
be obliged to compete with the colored laborer who re- 
ceived no wages for his toil. Besides, this class of 
immigrant was not wanted in the south; and he received 
scant courtesy from the prior occupants of the soil. 

Slavery and an antagonistic attitude towards immi- 
gration, it is generally admitted, were what prevented 
a more rapid increase of population in the south. In 
most of these states, they combined with religious bias 


1 Traditions of this night still live in Nashville. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 525 


to retard the growth of the Catholic Church. Only by 
taking this into consideration can we form a just appre- 
ciation of the trials of the bishops in those parts, or 
rightly understand why they did not accomplish so 
much as their brethren in the hierarchy who labored 
in more favorable environments. 

Despite obstacles of every sort, and declining health, 
the Father of the Church in Tennessee strove bravely to 
do all he could in the cause of God. As early as June 
22, 1850, he had sold a part of his land on Water Street 
(First Avenue) to the Nashville Gas and Light Com- 
pany. Further debts, it seems, had been necessitated 
in order to place the new community of sisters on its 
feet. On September 24, 1855, therefore, he sold another 
tract to Charles EK. Franklin; and September 6, in the 
same year, he sold his house and the ground on which 
it stood to the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad.’ 
March 26, 1856, Bishop Spalding wrote to Archbishop 
Purcell: 


By the way, the Nazareth Sisters at Nashville have prospered 
beyond my anticipations. In going to the South, I stopped two 
days with our brother of Nashville, and visited the seceding branch, 
which is getting on famously, having already twenty-one members, 
of whom only three are the original “bolters.” I was agreeably 
disappointed, and I begin to think that “secession”, after all, is 
not so bad. It is well that each Diocese should have a mother 
house and a novitiate. 

I found Bishop Miles in very bad health. His cough is 
exceedingly troublesome, and I fear that he is not long for this 
world. He has sold his fine house and lot, and bought what he 
calls a “rattrap’ near his Cathedral. But he congratulates him- 
self that he is at least out of debt.? 


2 Recorder’s Office, Nashville, Deed Book XIII, 494-495; and XXII, 
294-295, 362-363. 

3 Notre Dame Archives. Two of the earlier sisters had died—Sister 
Jane Frances on February 18, and Sister Ellen on December 6, 1854. They 
were the first sisters who died in Nashville. 


526 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Busy man as he was, Doctor Spalding’s regard for 
Nashville’s saintly prelate was such that he often visited 
him, in spite of the slow, tiresome travel of the day. 
Archbishop Purcell held him in no less esteem. March 
28, 1856, he wrote, in reply to the above letter: “I am 
sorry to hear of good Bishop Miles’ ill, or threatening 
state of, health. He was, I think, the best choice for 
Nashville that could have been made; and the founda- 
tion which he has built will surely receive, in God’s 
time, a noble superstructure.”* This seems to have been 
the prevailing opinion among the hierarchy, by all of 
whom he was looked upon as a model of piety, virtue, 
and zeal, no less than as a most fatherly bishop possessed 
of splendid judgment and no mean executive ability. 

“Whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth,” says Saint 
Paul. Judging Tennessee’s apostle by this criterion, 
one feels that he enjoyed no small measure of divine 
favor. March 21, 1856, he suffered the loss of another 
of his zealous priests. Four days later, Father Schacht 
wrote to the editor of the Catholic Telegraph: 


Very Rev. dear Sir:—You will oblige us all by publishing in the 
next issue of the Catholic Telegraph and Advocate the death of our 
dear Rev. Father Augustine Murphy, who died of flux on Good 
Friday at his mission, about nine miles from this city. The de- 
ceased was a native of Ireland; near fifty years of age; a man 
devoted to God, to prayer, and to the duties of the holy ministry; 
beloved by all who knew him. His remains were brought to the 
Cathedral in the night between Good Friday and Holy Saturday, 
and were surrounded all the time by our afflicted people, whose 
prayers and tears were the best evidence of their sincere grief. At 
half past two, P. M., the Right Rev. Bishop recited the Solemn 
Office of the Dead with his clergy, and then performed the funeral 
obsequies. You can conceive, Very Rev. dear Sir, what a loss the 


4 Louisville Archives. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 527 


death of this good priest is to our poor Diocese. May God send us 
such another.’ 


A. few days later, the holy man’s soul was tried per- 
haps as it had never been tried before, when a historic 
fire, fanned by a strong wind, destroyed a number of 
Nashville’s public structures, and threatened to include 
his cathedral, school, and home in its work of devasta- 
tion.° However, like Job, he placed his trust in God, 
who both gives and takes away with a wisdom that is 
divine and not to be judged by man. Whatever hap- 
pened, therefore, he submitted to with an admirable 
Christian patience, and continued his work with a heart 
that never lost its courage, and seldom its good cheer. 

Despite an ever weakening constitution and a racking 
cough that often tortured his entire frame, the ambassa- 
dor of Christ appears to have traversed the whole state 
again in 1856. Mrs. Mary Dunn, now of Nashville, 
told us that she was one of a large class, a number of 
whom were converts, confirmed in Chattanooga that 
year, while the bishop was on a tour of his diocese. The 
records of Knoxville give a list of some thirty confirmed 
there on the sixth of July. Nearly all these latter ap- 
pear to have been adults, if not even married people, a 
circumstance which shows that they were late arrivals 
in the city, and how it was often hard in those days for 
the faithful to receive that sacrament. Before the close 
of the year, his missionary forces were weakened by the 
recall of eloquent Father N. R. Young. 

5 Issue of April 5, 1856. Evidently the body could not be kept until 
the next morning. We regret that more could not be learned about this 
excellent priest than has been given in the text. He must either have 
come directly from abroad to Tennessee, or was ordained late in life for 
Nashville. Father Schacht’s letter to the Telegraph is dated March 


25, 1856. 
6 Telegraph, April 19, 1856. 


528 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


The work of the next two years was but a repetition 
of that which we have just outlined. Still, however oc- 
cupied at home, the zealous bishop’s goodness of heart 
rarely failed to cause him to find, or rather to make, 
time that he might increase the joy of the occasion by 
his presence at the consecration of a new member of the 
hierarchy within the ecclesiastical province of which he 
was a member, or that in which he had spent a large 
part of his life—Saint Louis and Cincinnati. Thus 
we find him in the latter city for the consecration of 
the Rev. Henry D. Juncker as the first bishop of Alton, 
Illinois, and the Rev. James F. Wood as coadjutor to 
Philadelphia, which took place on April 26, 1857, and 
was one of the most noted church events that had hither- 
to occurred in the near west.’ 

From Cincinnati the venerable prelate returned to 
Louisville with his friend, Doctor Spalding, whence he 
intended to accompany him to Saint Louis a few days 
later for the consecration, on May the third, of the Rev. 
James Duggan as coadjutor to Saint Louis, and the 
Trappist, Father Clement T. Smyth, for the same posi- 
tion in the Diocese of Dubuque. But, on his arrival 
at Louisville, our patriarch felt so weak that he feared 
to undertake this further journey. He therefore pro- 
ceeded to Saint Rose’s Priory. Thence, after a short 
rest, he went back to Nashville.* 

Evidently, before he left Kentucky on this occasion, 
Father M. A. O’Brien, then prior at Saint Rose’s, per- 
suaded him to return there and officiate on July 5 at a 
celebration, which must have been to commemorate the 

7 Telegraph, May 2, 1857. 


8 Bishop Spalding to Archbishop Purcell, April 30, 1857 (Notre Dame 
Archives); Telegraph, May 2, 1857. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 529 


golden jubilee of the erection of the first building of 
that Dominican alma mater. Very likely, indeed, the 
idea of these festivities originated in the bishop’s visit at 
the time, and they were largely in his honor. At any 
rate, on June 2, 1857, he wrote to Doctor Spalding from 
Nashville: 


I am very much relieved on hearing that you have returned safe 
home, and must congratulate you on the success of your wild-goose 
chase. It is an additional pleasure to know also that you will 
honour us with your presence at St. Rose on the first Sunday in 
July. Allow me also to crave the favour of using the crozier on 
that occasion, and to thank you in advance for the same.® 

Although we discovered no account of this celebration 
as such, the Catholic Telegraph of July 25, 1857, indi- 
cates that it was carried out on a rather grand scale. 
Manifestly Saint Catherine’s Academy made the clos- 
ing exercises of their school a part of the event; for the 
good sisters, no doubt in honor of their beloved co- 
founder, did their best that these might be a notable 
success. Bishop Miles himself presided. Father John 
De Blieck, S.J., rector of Saint Joseph’s College, 
Bardstown, and Mr. James P. Barbour, both men of 
distinction, delivered addresses. Doubtless in part be- 
cause of the occasion, and in part that he might have a 
much needed relaxation, the bishop spent two weeks or 
more at his old home. Father Brown, perhaps no less 
to look after the needs of his esteemed superior than to 
gratify his own desire to revisit the place where he had 
received the light of faith, accompanied the venerable 
apostle on this occasion. 

Father James V. Daly took the place of Father 
Cleary, deceased, at Memphis late in 1855. The Rev. 
John Scollard came from Princeton, New Jersey, to 

9 Louisville Archives. 


35 


530 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN: TENNESSEE 


join the clergy at Nashville in the summer or early fall 
of 1857. There too Father John Hyacinth Lynch, 
O.P., not only soon filled the vacancy created by the re- 
call of Father Young, but was also appointed rector of 
the cathedral, Father Schacht having resigned that 
position that he might have more time for the erection 
of a chapel at the new academy and orphan asylum, and 
a church in Edgefield (now East Nashville), as well as 
to make preparations for building another for the Ger- 
mans in Nashville proper.” 

On the whole, the progress of the diocese was good. 
During 1856, Father Orengo finished a church at 
McEwen, which seems to have supplanted an earlier 
one in Humphreys County built by Father Schacht, 


10 Daly’s first baptism in Memphis at this time is dated December 2, 
1855. Scollard’s first in Nashville was on September 18, and Lynch’s 
first October 18, 1857. 

Father Nicholas Raymond Young was born in the District of Columbia 
about 1818. He was a nephew of the noted Ohio missionary, Father N. 
D. Young, and the son of Ignatius and Barbara (Smith) Young. He 
received the habit of Saint Dominic at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, from 
Bishop Miles, then prior, January 23, 1834, and made his religious pro- 
fession, in the same place and to the same superior, June 28, 1835. In 1838 
he was sent to Rome to complete his studies, where he was ordained in 
1841. From the time of his return home, late in 1844 or early in 1845, 
as a Lector in Sacred Theology, he taught the Order’s ecclesiastical stu- 
dents in Ohio and Kentucky, was professor in Saint Joseph’s College 
(in the former state), and filled other important positions until he went 
to Tennessee. On leaving Nashville, he became pastor of Saint Dominic’s, 
Washington City, whence he went to Rome in the spring of 1859. He 
returned to Washington in 1860, and went back to Ohio the next year. 
In 1862 he became provincial, but resigned the position two years later, 
and shortly afterwards was secularized and incardinated into the Diocese 
of Cincinnati, under his intimate friend, Archbishop Purcell. Here he 
labored in Dayton and Bellefontaine. Twelve years later, for he ever 
retained his love and esteem for the Order, he made arrangements to 
return to it. He then paid a visit to his brother in Washington City, 
where he died on July 24, 1876, before he could put his design into ex- 
ecution. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 531 


and received the same name—Saint Patrick. Father 
Brown completed Saints Peter and Paul’s at Chatta- 
nooga before the close of 1857." Tradition, supported 
by the fact that he would undergo almost any hardship 
to benefit such occasions by his august presence, tells 
us that Bishop Miles blessed the two fanes. The church 
at McEwen was a log structure; the other a frame on 
a stone foundation. Both were neat and well built. 
Sometime in the same year (1857), the zealous prelate 
also purchased a Presbyterian church at a bargain in 
the thrifty town of Shelbyville, which he was having 
converted into a Catholic temple of prayer.” Father 
Grace had a fourth ready for dedication in Memphis. 
A German student was also nearing the end of his 
studies in the seminary at Cincinnati. 

Although the corner-stone of Saint John the Evan- 
gelist’s, Edgefield, was laid only on November 8, 1857, 
owing to the good weather and the earnestness of the 
workmen, it rose so rapidly that Bishop Miles was able 
to dedicate it on Sunday, December 22.° It was a neat 
Gothic structure, fifty-four feet in length by thirty- 
four in width. A correspondent of the Baltimore 


Catholic Mirror writes: 

On the 8th November, was recorded the laying of the corner 
stone of the Catholic church in Edgefield, near this city; and I 
feel much pleasure in having now to state that it is now finished, 
and has been (on yesterday) solemnly dedicated by our beloved 
and [venerable?] Right Rev. Bishop, in his usually solemn manner. 
Owing to the profound respect in which his Lordship is held by 
all classes of the community, although many non-Catholics were 
present, nothing occurred during the interesting and edifying cere- 

11 For several years the Almanac had noted the second church at Chat- 
tanooga as under way, but that for 1858 shows that it was then completed. 


12 The Guardian, November 27, 1858. 
13 The Metropolitan, December, 1857. 


532 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


monies to mar the heartfelt satisfaction and pleasure which he 
must have experienced at this further proof of the increase of 
Catholicity in his Diocese, to the interest of which he is so entirely 
devoted. 

It was a matter of agreeable surprise and conversation to many, 
as they left the church, to find that in the short space of a few 
weeks so neat and substantial a church has sprung up in their 
midst. It is built of brick in the Gothic style of architecture. 
No doubt it speaks well for the zeal of the Pastor and the piety 
of the people to do so much in so short a time, particularly as the 
church is nearly paid for.14 | 

Father Schacht said his midnight mass there for 
Christmas. On this occasion also, the Telegraph of 
January 9, 1858, tells us, the church was crowded with 
worshippers, “many of whom were not Catholics, but 
who vied with their Catholic fellow-citizens in religious 
and respectful behavior.” Continuing the account, 
it says: 

The choir performed Mozart’s Twelfth Mass to a delighted 
congregation, who felt and expressed their pleasure and grati- 
fication to all their friends; for, though the Catholics are not 
many in number, they have long needed a little church, especially 
in the winter season. And they have now realized, they said, 
their long cherished hopes. The Right Rev. Bishop has (on the 
12th of October last) charged the Rev. I. Schacht with the new 
mission, where much remains to be done, it being the terminus of 
three different railroads, where several Catholic families will find 
employment.!© 

Together with Saint John’s, the industrious mission- 
ary busied himself with another sacred work. ‘This 
was also outside the city. Of the celebration of the 


14Tssue of January 9, 1858. 

15 Both in this quotation and in that which immediately follows Father 
Schacht’s initial is J. Evidently he himself wrote the account, and this 
error was caused by the fact that he made the capital I exactly like the 
capital J. We corrected the mistake in both instances. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE sake 


feast of our Lord’s Nativity there the Telegraph's 
correspondent writes: 

On the same Christmas morning, Rev. I. Schacht opened the 
chapel at the new Academy of the Sisters of Charity three and 
a half miles from Nashville, on the White’s Creek Turnpike, and 
celebrated therein his second Mass on Christmas Day. The little 
sanctuary was most tastefully decorated by the good sisters, and 
they sang several hymns during the celebration of the Holy 
Sacrifice. The neighboring Catholics who were present approached 
Holy Communion after the community. You see, Messrs. Editors, 
that we are endeavoring to do something nowithstanding the 
many difficulties we labor under in this Diocese. 

Hardly had our aged prelate recovered from the fa- 
tigue caused by the hard labor of the Christmas season, 
when he started for Memphis, accompanied by Fathers 
Montgomery and Lynch. The object of this journey 
was to dedicate the new Church of Saints Peter and 
Paul (January 24), and to administer the sacrament 
of confirmation. In an account of the ceremony, a 
southern contributor to the Telegraph of January 30, 


1858, writes: 

The dedication of the new Catholic church on Sunday last was 
witnessed by one of the largest assemblages of citizens that we 
remember ever to have seen on any religious occasion in our city. 
The service of dedication was performed by the Right Rev. 
Bishop of the Diocese, Doctor Miles, assisted by Rev. T. L. Grace 
of Memphis, and Rev. S. L. Montgomery of Nashville. The cere- 
monies were most imposing, and had a striking effect upon all pres- 
ent, particularly when the procession, after moving around the ex- 
terior of the edifice, advanced through the great door up the nave to 
the High Altar. After the blessing of the church, a Solemn High 
Mass was performed by the Very Rev. T. J. Jarboe of Wisconsin, 
assisted by the Rev. J. V. Daly and the Rev. J. H. Lynch as 
deacon and subdeacon. 


Among those in the sanctuary were the Right Revs. 
William Henry Elder of Natchez and Martin J. 


534 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


Spalding of Louisville, the latter of whom preached at 
the Gospel. After vespers, in the afternoon, Bishop 
Miles, in his characteristically edifying manner, con- 
firmed a class of more than a hundred—among them 
a number of converts. Doctor Elder delivered a 
sermon. ‘The day closed with benediction in the eve- 
ning and an eloquent discourse by the Louisville 
prelate. At all these services the church was crowded 
by an audience who conducted themselves with the 
utmost decorum. 

Saints Peter and Paul’s was largely the work of 
Father Grace, who had been pastor from 1849, and vicar 
general for the western part of the diocese from 1856 
or 1857. Few clergymen in the country enjoyed so 
great a reputation for learning, zeal, eloquence, and 
prudence. Every notice of the church he had built 
which one sees in the literature of the day, whether in 
the form of a letter or an article in print, speaks of its 
exquisite beauty. The stately brick Gothic structure 
is still regarded as one of the finest ecclesiastical edifices 
of the south. 

In point of numbers the Catholicity of Memphis had 
by this time perhaps overtaken, if not even outstripped, 
that of Nashville. Saint Peter’s was now a flourishing 
parish. German members of the faith had considerably 
increased, had a pastor (Father Gangloff) specially 
for themselves, and were anxiously awaiting the day 
when they could afford to have a church of their own. 
The records also show the beginning of that splendid 
Italian element which was later to play an important 
part in the religious affairs of the city. 

Bishop Miles, it will be recalled, would have preferred 
to be placed in the ecclesiastical province of Cincinnati. 


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INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR OF SAINT PETER'’'S 


SECOND CHURCH, AND STILL ITS MOST BEAUTIFUL 


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THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 535 


His clergy seem to have felt the same way—possibly 
more for reasons of convenience than anything else, as 
the development of the country lay at that time. Now 
therefore, since a number of suffragan dioceses had 
been erected under the metropolitan see of Saint Louis, 
he consulted Archbishop Peter R. Kenrick, and ob- 
tained his consent that Tennessee should be taken from 
the Province of Saint Louis and affiliated to that of Cin- 
cinnati. But, of course, this change could not take 
effect without the sanction of Rome. Accordingly, 
April 5, 1858, the man of God wrote to acquaint 
Archbishop Purcell with the matter.*© The reply must 
have been both swift and strongly favorable; for on 
the thirteenth of the same month he wrote again: 

Your very kind welcome to my old home has filled my heart 
with gratitude; and my trip to Cincinnati will be one of the most 
pleasant in my recollection. I thank you for your kindness in 
offering me a room in your house, and cheerfully accept it. The 
room at the head of the stairs, in which I have spent many happy 
hours, would suit me “to a fraction.” Whilst I am very grateful 
to Mr. Slevin and Lady for their kind offer of hospitality, I beg 


leave to say that it is too far from the Cathedral for my 
comfort. . . .17 


Doubtless Archbishop Purcell’s prompt response 
was due to his anxiety to have his life-long friend in 
his province, and his desire that he should be at hand 
when the affair came up for consideration at the pro- 
vincial council of Cincinnati which was to convene on 
the second day of May. The kindness of the metro- 
politan’s offer of a room in his own house at this time 
may be gauged by the fact that it was not large enough 
to accommodate all the bishops of the province who 


16 Notre Dame Archives. 
17 Thid. 


536 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


would attend the council, and the subject of our nar- 
rative had no legal right to be there. Indeed, wherever 
he went, his own native goodness seems to have caused 
Nashville’s prelate to be accorded some special regard. 
Possibly Archbishop Purcell procured him the offer 
of Mr. Slevin’s hospitality that he might avail himself 
of it, in case he should not like to be so closely associated 
with .the fathers of a conciliar body of which he was 
not a member. 

In any event, he soon started for Cincinnati, accom- 
panied by Father Schacht. He remained in the city 
until after the close of the council, but took no part 
in its deliberations, although he was no doubt invited 
to its sessions. While there, he preached in the 
cathedral, and gave a discourse to its school children.*® 

The overworked apostle had long desired and sought 
to obtain a coadjutor. Doubtless, therefore, as he felt 
that he would soon be out of the ecclesiastical province 
of Saint Louis, was borne down with age and broken 
in health, and did not believe that he had long to live, 
it was in Cincinnati that he wrote to Pius [X, begging 
this favor. Father N. R. Young, who had already 
labored in ‘Tennessee, was the first on his list. Father 
Sydney Albert Clarkson, prior of Saint Rose’s, in 
Kentucky, was second. ‘Then came Father James 
Whelan, provincial at the time. ‘The reason why he 
proposed only Dominicans for the position was that 
more than half of the priests in the diocese belonged 
to the Order, that this religious institute had always 
aided him at a great sacrifice, that the Church of Ten- 
nessee was very poor, and that the fact of its first bishop 
having been a member of the Order would, in case 


18 Telegraph, April 24 and May 1, 8, and 15, 1858. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE Jan 


his successor were taken from it, cause it to continue 
its heroic sacrifices in behalf of religion there.” 
Father Brown, because a convert, the holy man no 
doubt felt had not yet been long enough ordained to be 
elevated to the episcopal dignity; Father Grace, he well 
knew, would not accept the honor of the miter without 
compulsion; humble Father Hoste, who spoke English 
very indistinctly, would have recoiled from such a 
responsibility with his whole soul; and Father Schacht, 
despite his talents and capacity for work, lacked qual- 
ities necessary for a good bishop. The others were either 
too young in the ministry or too imperfectly acquainted 
with the language of the land. ‘These considerations, 
there can be little doubt, explain why no priest of the 
diocese was placed on the list. Probably another reason 
was the hope that the appointment of an outsider might 
result in bringing more missionaries into ‘Tennessee. 
That Bishop Miles submitted his petition to the pro- 
vincial council of Cincinnati is evidenced by a letter of 
Archbishop Purcell to the prefect of the Propaganda 
of date May 9, 1858. In this document the metro- 
politan says that he prefers Father Young for the place, 
and that the Right Rev. Peter Paul Lefevre, adminis- 
trator of Detroit, objected to only Dominicans being 
placed on the list. Others seem to have been added by 
the fathers of the council, but we could not learn who 
they were.” Evidently some influence not that of Bish- 
op Miles determined the appointment of Father Whe- 
lan—-or was it perhaps the fact that his name had been 
previously sent to Rome in connection with other vacant 


19 A draft of his letter in the Notre Dame Archives. It is not dated, 
but circumstances leave little or no doubt that it was written in Cin- 
cinnati at this time. 

20 A draft or copy in the Notre Dame Archives. 


538 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


sees! The tradition of Saint Joseph’s Province has al- 
ways attributed it to Archbishop Purcell. 

Our apostle did not tarry long in Cincinati. On 
his homeward journey he seems to have stopped at 
Louisville and Saint Rose’s. A communication from 
Nashville, May 24, 1858, to the Guardian says: 


As an item of ecclesiastical intelligence, I have no doubt that 
many of your readers will be glad to hear that our venerable Bish- 
op, Right Rev. Doctor Miles, has returned home in good health 
from his short visit to Ohio and Kentucky, the scenes of his former 
many labors and triumphs. It afforded much pleasure to his 
affectionate flock, on yesterday (Pentecost Sunday), to witness 
with what solemn and impressive dignity he administered the Sac- 
rament of Confirmation to those of the children who were prepared 
to receive that consoling and strengthening rite.?! 


Bishop Miles’ rule was one of patience, kindness, for- 
bearance, and discretion. No one could be freer from 
the charge of favoritism. Never did he act with im- 
petuosity. He sought first to correct a transgressor by 
gentle advice, rather than by infliction of punishment; 
and rarely did his efforts fail. Still, when he felt it 
necessary, he could be firm and unbending. Now his 
calm spirit was to be subjected to a test such as perhaps 
it had never experienced before. 

A strong tradition, which is rather corroborated even 
by the History of the Sisters of Charity of Leaven- 
worth, has it that for some time the gentle prelate had 
admonished F'ather Schacht of certain unwise actions, 
and exhorted him to be more prudent; but his paternal 
advice was neither heeded nor kindly taken.” Shortly 
after his return from Cincinnati, he learned that Father 
Schacht was using a glass goblet for a chalice at the 
academy and orphan asylum on White’s Creek Turn- 


21 Issue of June 5, 1858. 22 Page 33. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 07 


pike. The distressed bishop lost no time, as he was 
bound in conscience to do, in ordering a discontinuance 
of this flagrant and unpardonable transgression. Fa- 
ther Schacht, however, not only defended himself, but 
even continued to use the goblet at mass.** Although he 
must have felt that he was now obliged to take severe 
measures, Bishop Miles did not wish to do this without 
first consulting another member of the hierarchy. <Ac- 
cordingly, July 27, 1858, he wrote to his friend, Doctor 
Spalding of Louisville: 

Please pardon me for troubling you at this moment, and allow 
me to lay before you a case that has given me much anxiety. I 
would then ask what should I do with a priest that has dared to 
offer up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass without a chalice, using 
a glass phial in its stead? ‘There was not even the slightest ne- 
cessity for so doing; and surely no case whatever could excuse or 
even palliate the sacrilege. If Monseigneur will be kind enough 
to give me his opinion on this subject, he will greatly oblige me. 
Does not the culprit deserve suspension ?*4 

The trembling hand in which the document is written 
reveals the anguish of mind caused our apostle by this 
distressful incident. Bishop Spalding was not slow to 
advise the penalty of suspension. When it was inflicted, 
Father Schacht almost aroused a schism by a vociferous 
appeal to his friends, and even went in high dudgeon 
to Saint Louis in order to have Archbishop Kenrick 
cancel the sentence. Possibly the recalcitrant clergy- 
man thought he could frighten his aged and infirm 

23 This affair is an old tradition. The late Father Eugene Gazzo of- 
ten spoke of it to the writer. He received direct information of the in- 
cident from Father Orengo who was a missionary in Tennessee when it 
occurred. We have before us a document which shows that the sisters 
knew all about the use of a goblet for a chalice in their house, and the 
trouble which it caused Father Schacht. 


24 Louisville Archives—photostat copy in those of Saint Joseph’s Prov- 
ince. 


540 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


superior. In his anger, the missionary, though he 
should have learned by long association, forgot Bishop 
Miles’ strength of will and firmness of character, as 
well as his courage of conviction. Adamantine was his 
stand; neither could it have been otherwise. ‘The metro- 
politan, as might have been foreseen, showed Father 
Schacht scant courtesy. However, he was too proud 
to bend. August 25, 1858, Bishop Miles wrote again to 
Doctor Spalding: 

Allow me to thank you, though late, for your very kind and 
prompt attention to my late request. J have acted upon it, and 
the consequence is that our congregations at Nashville are at log- 
gerheads ever since. The persecuted gentleman went to St. Louis 
with flying colours, leaving his duped followers under the full 
conviction that the Archbishop would restore him. MHe returned, 
however, with colours at rather less than half-mast. He is here 
yet; and the people are greatly excited, and will remain so as 
long as he is among them. I go next week to the Provincial 
Council, and should not be surprised to meet him there. I hope 
to see you at home in a few weeks, when I shall take occasion 
to explain the whole matter.?° 

Mother Xavier Ross, there is but little room for 
doubt, was among those who took sides with her friend 
and counsellor, Father Schacht, in his rebellion against 
his bishop, one of the kindliest and most benevolent of 
men. Naturally this alienated Bishop Miles’ affections 
from a community upon whom he had bestowed no little 
tender care. It also looks very much as if Father 
Schacht, now that he had to go, urged the sisters to do 
the same, and they followed his advice. ‘These were the 
things, and not their debts, as represented in their his- 
tory, which led to the departure of the sisters from 
Nashville.” 

25 Original and photostat copy as in the preceding note. 


26 There is abundant evidence of the high regard in which Bishop Miles 
held this community until this time. The History of the Sisters of Charity 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 541 


The second provincial council of Saint Louis assem- 
bled in that city on September 19, 1858. Bishop Miles 
had to attend, for Rome had not sanctioned the incor- 
poration of Nashville in the Province of Cincinnati. 
We do not know if Father Schacht went to the council, 
as Bishop Miles thought he might. But Mother Xavier 
Ross, the History of the Sisters of Charity of Leaven- 
worth assures us, did go; nor is it any stretch of fancy 
to suppose that she acted on the advice of Father 
Schacht.’ There she was fortunate enough to be 
offered a place in Leavenworth by Bishop Miége, who 
was in need of sisters. Bishop Miles, for he knew that 
the days of her usefulness in Nashville were at an end, 
quite naturally made no objection to the arrangement. 
No doubt, indeed, he even welcomed it as a happy solu- 
tion of the difficulty. It is scarcely probable that 
Doctor Miége took in her and her companions without 
consulting their former bishop. 

Quite possibly the Father of the Church in Tennessee, 
in his goodness of heart, even persuaded Bishop Miége 
to extend Father Schacht an offer of hospitality in his 
of Leavenworth (pages 32-33) would have us believe that Bishop Miles 
authorized Father Schacht to use money on deposit at the cathedral for 
the erection of a new academy in the country; and then, when the trouble 
came, he (the bishop) refused to be responsible for debts which he had 
sanctioned. There is no evidence for this charge of cruelty and injustice. 
Indeed, the whole story of the bishop’s life shows that there could scarcely 
have been any deposits at the cathedral, for he was practically always in 
debt. Besides, Father Schacht seems to have troubled himself little about 
permissions. He did things pretty much as he liked. He, not the bishop, 
was responsible for the sisters’ debts. He, not the bishop, should have 
assumed their burden—especially, as this history tells us, it would have 
been only a matter of a short time when the debt could have been paid. 
It strikes one as quite strange that, according to this history, Bishop Miles 
was wholly within his rights at the time of the separation from Nazareth, 


and totally in the wrong when the latter difficulty arose. 
27 Page 44. 


542 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


diocese. At any rate, we find the former pastor of the 
Seven Dolors Cathedral, Nashville, in Kansas before 
the close of 1858. In Leavenworth the sisters met with 
extraordinary success, for which God be _ praised. 
Tennessee’s loss was Kansas’ gain. However, under 
the circumstances, Bishop Miles could not well have 
done otherwise than he did. Our greatest regret in the 
matter is that, in their history, they saw fit to lay prac- 
tically the entire blame for the difficulty on him, when 
the evidence places it elsewhere; and that this obliged 
us to go into the story more fully than we liked.” 
Still, while he could but deeply regret the loss of 
these efficient workers, the man of God had every rea- 
son to congratulate himself. ‘Through the more than 
twenty-one years of his episcopate we found no other 
trace of shock or scandal, a record of which any bishop 
might be justly proud. Few chief pastors gain so 
strong a hold on the hearts of their clergy and people 
as did the first of Nashville. Doubtless it was this that 
enabled him to keep his equipoise at so trying a moment. 

Father Grace, vicar general for western Tennessee, 
accompanied him to the council in Saint Louis as theo- 

28 About the time of the arrival of Father Schacht in Kansas see Kin- 
sella’s A Centenary of Catholicity in Kansas, p. 89. 

Father Ivo Schacht was born in Bruges, Belgium, in 1821, and was 
principally educated in his native land. The appeal of Bishop Miles for 
missionaries, at the time of his visit abroad, brought him to this country. 
From Kansas he went to Kentucky in 1861 or 1862. There he labored 
hard and faithfully at Saint Alphonsus’ (Daviess County), Lebanon, 
Paducah, and Owensboro, dying in the last named place, April 14, 1874. 
The Owensboro Monitor of April 22, and the resurrected Catholic Ad- 
vocate (Louisville) of April 23, 1874, gave good accounts of his life 
and labors. Wherever he toiled, he was popular among the people. It 
is a pity that an earlier spirit of unruliness, into which he was probably 


led by a popularity that came while he was young, cut short his efficient 
work in Nashville. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 543 


Jogian, where he again met his old friend, Father J. T. 
Jarboe, who represented the Friars Preacher there. 
After his return home, and the departure of the sisters 
who went to Kansas, the bishop, continuing the even 
tenor of his ways, made arrangements by which those 
who remained loyal were placed in charge of the Hos- 
pital of the State of Tennessee located at Nashville. 
With these he hoped to begin anew, trusting that in time 
they would be able to resume all their charitable and 
educational works. But his successor, perhaps wisely in 
view of the late troubles, persuaded them to become 
affiliated with other communities, and brought in Do- 
minican Sisters in their stead.” 

Meanwhile, John Anthony Vogel, a seminarian 
obtained from Bishop Spalding, had been brought from 
Mount Saint Mary’s, Cincinnati, that he might instruct 
the Germans while completing his studies under 
Father S. L. Montgomery. On Sunday, October 17, 
1858, Bishop Miles ordained him, and placed him in 
charge of the German portion of the cathedral parish. 
Before his ordination, the young priest had begun a 
church for those of that nationality, for which he now 
collected means in various parts of the country. Of 
an artistic temperament as well as of a practical mind, 
he was architect, contractor, and superintendent of the 
structure all in one.*° 

Father Brown had by this time completely meta- 
morphosed the brick Presbyterian church purchased 
in Shelbyville the previous year. The exterior had been 

29 An account of his own administration by Bishop James Whelan in 
the Nashville Archives; Catholic Almanac, 1860, and 1861. 

30 Bishop Miles to Bishop Spalding, February 18, 1857 (Louisville 


Archives); same to Archbishop Blanc, February 22, 1859 (Notre Dame 
Archives) ; the Guardian, October 23 and 30, 1858, and August 27, 1859. 


544 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


renovated, the interior painted and re-arranged, and the 
old-time weathereock and pawnbroker’s balls on the 
cupola supplanted by a handsome cross, so that the 
former fortress of error no longer recognized itself, it 
looked so much like a new Catholic temple of worship. 
Father Biemans came from Knoxville to say the first 
mass in it on Sunday, September 19, 1858. Father 
Brown preached at the mass, and Father Biemans at 
vespers. The choir of the cathedral furnished the music. 
Bishop Miles could not be present because he was at the 
council in Saint Louis. Doubtless this was why the 
ceremony of dedication was deferred until the next 
year.” 

There is every indication (and it was only natural 
that he should) that Bishop Miles again brought up 
the subject of a coadjutor at the council of Saint Louis, 
for he was still in that province. Possibly Father 
Whelan was put first on the list there, for he was the 
best known of the three Friars Preacher selected by 
Nashville’s incumbent, while he was also a native of 
Ireland, like Archbishop Kenrick. Such things some- 
times count even in matters of religion. Early in the 
next year, our apostle learned that Rome had decided he 
should remain a suffragan of Saint Louis, but at the 
same time he received the consolation of an assurance 
that he would soon have a coadjutor.*” 

31 The Guardian, November 27, 1858. 

82 Archbishop Purcell to Bishop Spalding, January 3, 1859 (Louisville 
Archives). The Mirror of October 9, 1858, as do other papers, gives a 
long account of this council. The Telegraph of the same date contains 
the pastoral of its bishops; and the Annales, XX, 1-2, print their letter 
of thanks and gratitude to the Society for the Propagation of the faith. 

Bishop Patrick A. Feehan, who was appointed to Nashville from Saint 


Louis, eventually succeeded in having Tennessee made a part of the 
Province of Cincinnati. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 545 


One can readily imagine that the man of God was 
deeply rejoiced at this latter information, and that he 
prayed heartily for a worthy successor, whoever he 
might be, who would build well on the foundations 
which he himself had laid with such great pains. He 
had not long to wait, if we consider the slow mails of 
the day together with Rome’s well-known policy of 
deliberation; for, on March 15, 1859, Father James 
Whelan, O.P., received the bulls of his appointment as 
coadjutor of Nashville, and was given the written con- 
sent of his provincial, Father Joseph A.., Kelly, to 
accept the nomination on Easter Sunday, the twenty- 
fourth of April.** 

Father James Michael O’Gorman, prior of the 
Trappist Monastery of New Melleray, near Dubuque, 
Iowa, had been appointed vicar apostolic of Nebraska 
and titular bishop of Raphanea about the same time. 
The consecration of the two prelates took place in 
Saint Louis, May 8, 1859. Archbishop Kenrick per- 
formed the ceremony, in which he was assisted by 
Bishops Miége, S.J., and Smyth, O.C.R., the latter of 
whom also preached the sermon for the occasion. Be- 
sides many priests, Bishops Juncker and Duggan also 
honored the event with their presence.** One of his 
frequent sudden attacks of sickness prevented Bishop 
Miles from attending. Perhaps, however, not even the 
newly consecrated were more deeply interested. At 

33 Father Kelly’s diary. 

34 Father Kelly’s diary; the Saint Louis Missouri Republican, April 10, 
1859. Kelly’s diary shows that his own name had been sent to Rome on 
the list from which to select a bishop for the quondam Diocese of Grass 
Valley, California, and substantiates the old tradition that the Saint Louis 
council proposed Father Jarboe for one of the new dioceses which it 
asked to be erected. It is an accepted tradition in Saint Joseph’s Province 


and in Tennessee that only Father Jarboe’s deafness prevented him from 
becoming a bishop. 


36 


546 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


home he sent up his prayers to heaven for them. As 
far as we are aware, this was the only occasion on which 
two members of religious orders were anointed bishops 
at one time in the United States, and the only event of 
the kind in which four prelates of religious orders took 
part—a Dominican, a Jesuit, and two Cistercians. 
Because of Bishop Miles’ illness, the coadjutor of 
Nashville, although he hurried to the episcopal city 
immediately after his consecration, could not be pub- 
licly inducted into his new post of duty until three weeks 
later. A correspondent of the Guardian, most likely 
the Rev. H. V. Brown, writes to that paper from Chat- 


tanooga, June 4, 1859: 

On Sunday, May 29, I was in Nashville, and had the good 
fortune to witness, in the Cathedral, the installation, by Bishop 
Miles, of his coadjutor, Right Rev. James Whelan. Immediately 
before High Mass, the two Bishops, with several attendant Priests 
and acolytes, entered the sanctuary, and having knelt before the 
high altar in silent prayer, took their appropriate places. The 
venerable Bishop Miles, standing on his throne, proceeded at 
once to introduce to the large congregation his coadjutor, the future 
Bishop of Nashville, as one whom he had long known, in whom 
he had every confidence, and whom he had urgently presented for 
the office, and heartily recommended to the love and obedience of 
the Catholics of ‘Tennessee. 

“I cheerfully surrender to him,” said he, “as well the consola- 
tions as the labors, cares, and responsibilities of the Episcopacy. 
I give up to him all but my title and chair, which I am not at 
liberty to relinquish while I live.” He glanced briefly at the 
time of his arrival in Nashville, the dreary and discouraging 
circumstances by which he was then surrounded, as contrasted 
with the present condition of affairs, so full of hope for the rapid 
progress of our holy religion. He said that he had long and 
ardently desired and sought the assistance of a coadjutor, which 
his advanced age and increasing infirmities rendered so necessary, 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 547 


and congratulated himself and his hearers that the choice had fallen 
upon one every way so worthy. 

The aged prelate spoke slowly, in a low and tremulous tone of 
voice, broken sometimes by his efforts to restrain his emotions. 
He sat down amid the profoundest silence, and numerous evidences 
of deep feeling on the part of his auditors.*° 

Another communication from Nashville tells us that 
the bishop’s discourse brought tears to every eye.*° 
Both writers pronounce Bishop Whelan’s reply happy 
in the extreme, and say his address “made a visible and 
strong impression, and was exceedingly well received 
by all who heard it.” At the Gospel he also preached 
a superb sermon, which no one could but admire. 
Father Brown (for he was at the installation, and no 
other would have written from Chattanooga), after 
telling about Bishop Whelan’s sermon, closes his article 
in this way: 

But while we admire him, and wish him every success and 
happiness, we will not forget the many labors and sacrifices of 
Bishop Miles, through whose instrumentality everything so far 
done for the Church in Tennessee has been accomplished. We 
owe him a debt of gratitude we can never repay. We wish him 
length of days, a serene and happy old age, and a glorious im- 
mortality. 

This must have been a happy day for Bishop Miles, 
for he had now realized a long-cherished desire, and seen 
how his successor had won the hearts of the people. On 
Sunday, June 12, Bishop Whelan preached again at the 
mass, at the close of which he administered confirmation 
and delivered a sermon on that sacrament. Again, to 
the joy of Bishop Miles, the cathedral parish was elec- 
trified by the coadjutor’s learning and eloquence. In 
connection with the account of this event, the Nashville 


35 Issue of June 18, 1859. 
36 The Guardian, June 11, 1859. 


548 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH INvTENNESSEE 


correspondent writes: “The Catholics of the Diocese of 
Nashville owe our venerable Bishop an everlasting 
debt of gratitude, not only for his successful efforts in 
behalf of religion during the many years of his episco- 
pacy, but also for giving us so good and kind a Father 
as the Right Rev. Bishop Whelan.” * 

The diocesan schools, though they were all now 
taught by lay persons, were in a flourishing condition. 
Saint Agnes’ Academy, conducted by the Dominican 
Sisters in Memphis, had a large attendance, and had 
attained a wide reputation for its efficiency. The 
orphan asylum there was a blessing to the city and 
western ‘Tennessee. 

Father Daly had been called to other parts by his 
provincial in February or March, 1858; but I’ather 
Stephen Byrne forthwith took his place at Memphis. 
Father Januarius M. D’Arco accompanied Bishop 
Whelan to Nashville; and Father Lynch became pastor 
of Saint Peter’s, in the Bluff City, in lieu of Father 
Grace who had been obliged by Rome, in spite of his 
strong reluctance, to accept the miter of Saint Paul, 
Minnesota. In the fall of the same year (1859), Mem- 
phis received another recruit in the person of Father 
John Thomas Nealis. Father James A. Marschal (or 
Marshall), a Dominican missionary apostolic from the 
Polish-Prussian Province who had labored in various 
dioceses of the United States, joined the clerical 
forces of ‘Tennessee in the same year. He was 
stationed at Clarksville.** The bishop had established 

37 The Guardian, June 18, 1859. 

38 Father Lynch’s last baptism at Nashville was on May 10, 1859, and 

Father D’Arco’s first on August 9. Father Daly’s last at Memphis was on 


February 8, 1858, and Father Byrne’s first on March 29. Father Lynch’s 
first in Memphis was on July 3, and Father Nealis’ first on September 17, 





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THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 549 


a board of diocesan counsellors in 1858 composed of 
Fathers Montgomery, V.G., Hoste, Scollard, and 
Lynch. 

Thus, all in all, the diocese was well organized, had 
at last been placed on a firm footing, and held out good 
promise for the future. Bishop Miles might, therefore, 
now that he had a coadjutor, reasonably have availed 
himself of a well-earned right to rest and repose. But 
the ever alert mind of our venerable patriarch united 
with an unbounded zeal to urge him on to action, if 
he was able to be about. 

Father Grace’s name had been sent to Rome in 
connection with several American sees. By the last 
provincial council of Saint Louis he was proposed as 
the second bishop of Saint Paul, the Rev. Anthony 
Pelamourgues, vicar general of Dubuque, having de- 
clined the place. Father Grace returned the bulls of 
his appointment at once; but in early June, 1859, he 
received them the second time with a positive command 
to accept. He was consecrated by Archbishop Kenrick 
in Saint Louis on the twenty-fourth of July. Bishops 
Miles and Duggan acted as assistant consecrators, the 
1859. We did not inspect the records at Clarksville, and hence do not 
know just when Father Marschal took charge there. 

Father James Vincent Daly was born in Ballygawley, County Tyrone, 
Ireland, December 25, 1816. His parents were Patrick and Mary (Keen) 
Daly. He was practically ready for the priesthood when he received the 
Dominican habit at Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio, January 18, 1845. There he 
made his religious profession on January 23, 1846, and was ordained by 
Archbishop Eccleston on June 20, 1848. Few priests have had a busier 
life than he; while many parts of the country felt the beneficial effects 
of his consuming zeal. The greater part of his time, after leaving Mem- 
phis, was given to parochial missions. Everywhere his strong, logical 
sermons were listened to with breathless silence. He died in New York 


City, July 3, 1881. Had he lived a little longer, he would have been one 
of his province’s first Preachers General. 


550 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


latter of whom also preached the sermon. Bishops 
Henni, Juncker, and Whelan and a large number of 
priests filled the sanctuary.” 


39 Father Kelly’s diary; Reuss, Biographical Cyclopedia, p. 50. Father 
Kelly does not mention Bishop Miles’ presence; but, because of a storm 
which delayed his boat from Memphis, he did not reach Saint Louis until 
after the ceremony. Probably he did not see the aged prelate, who had 
perhaps retired to his room, and so did not think of him. In fact, the 
diary does not say who were.the assistant consecrators. Reuss, who 
claims that he got his data from Archbishop Grace himself, says positively 
that Bishops Miles and Duggan were the co-consecrators. No other ac- 
count that we have seen gives either the bishops present or those who 
were assistants in the consecration. 

Archbishop Thomas Langdon Grace, all the authorities tell us, was born 
in Charleston, South Carolina, November, 16, 1814, and was the first native 
of that state to become either a priest or a bishop. Some years ago, we 
showed the late Archbishop Ireland a statement in the Profession Book 
of Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, that Doctor Grace was born in Pennsyl- 
vania; but he said that it was an error occasioned by the fact that Pierce 
Grace, the father, went from that state to Cincinnati shortly before the 
son went to Saint Rose’s. Archbishop Grace’s father, a man of con- 
siderable education, was a teacher by profession, but served as an officer 
in the American army during the war of 1812-1814. He gave all his 
children a splendid education. 

The archbishop went to Saint Rose’s from Bishop Fenwick’s college 
in Cincinnati, received the habit of Saint Dominic, June 10, 1830, and made 
his religious profession on June 12, 1831. In 1838 he was sent to Rome, 
where he was ordained on December 21, 1839. Returning home late in 
1844, or early in 1845, with the Dominican degree of S. T. Lr., he was sta- 
tioned at Saint Rose’s until he went to Memphis. Here he won the hearts 
of all by his zeal, virtues, and priestly deportment, as well as by his kindly 
manners, charity, manly spirit, learning, and eloquence. Memphis has yet 
to have any clergyman who has been more generally or profoundly loved, 
admired, and esteemed than was he. After he became a bishop, he gave 
his whole heart and soul to his diocese. Rarely did he leave its confines 
except on urgent business or necessity. On one occasion, he started for 
Rome to plead that Father John Ireland, whom he wished to have for 
his own successor, might not be appointed to another see. When he reached 
Lourdes, he received word that his petition had been granted. Immediate- 
ly, he turned his steps towards his beloved diocese. He was one of the 
staunchest advisers of the establishment of an American Catholic Uni- 
versity in the nation’s capital. In 1884 he resigned his bishopric, and 
in 1888 was appointed titular archbishop of Siunia. He died on February 
22, 1897. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 551 


Our apostolic chief pastor had long desired to have 
a church for his beloved Germans in Nashville. <As 
early as April 3, 1857, he sold the land on which stood 
Saint John’s Hospital (the former Holy Rosary Cathe- 
dral, on Capitol Hill) to the State of Tennessee which 
wanted it for public purposes.*® Before the sale of this 
ground, which he knew the government would soon 
demand, he took down the structure and stored away the 
materials for a German church. The sacred edifice, now 
practically completed, was a neat and substantial brick 
building, Gothic in architecture, ninety-eight feet in 
length by fifty in width, with an interior height of forty- 
five feet. From Saint Louis he hurried back home for 
the dedication of this church, which took place on 
August 14, 1859. A writer to the [Lieder lis Guardian 


says of the event: 

On Sunday, the fourteenth instant, your humble servant, a 
stranger in Nashville, had an opportunity of witnessing a cheer- 
ing evidence of the steady progress of our holy religion in this 
city. This was the dedication of a new temple of the Most High 


for the use of the German Catholics of Nashville and vicinity. 
Long before the hour appointed, though the weather was ex- 


tremely warm, a great concourse of Catholics and Protestants was 
on the ground, awaiting the arrival of the Right Rev. Bishops to 
commence the imposing ceremony. 

The venerable Bishop Miles, despite his feeble state of health, 
performed the ceremonies of dedication. He was assisted by the 
Rev. Messrs. Hoste, D’Arco, and Vogel. The forms and usages 
of blessing a new Catholic church, so solemn, so full of deep 
meaning, and so elevating to the Christian mind, were gone through 
with in an imposing and effective manner. After the blessing of 
the new church, Right Rev. Bishop Miles spoke to his people 
in a very feeling manner. He congratulated the German Catholics 
on the consummation of an event he so long had at heart; and he 


40 Recorder’s Office, Nashville, Deed Book XXVI, 402. 


San THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


commended them to the guidance of their worthy pastor, Rev. J. 
41 


Vorel iy 

After the Gospel, Bishop Whelan preached a classic 
sermon in English. Father Vogel spoke in German. 
The church was named the Assumption, which doubtless 
increased the joy of the day, for both Bishop Miles and 
his cherished German Catholics had a great devotion to 
the Blessed Virgin. 

Shortly after the dedication of Nashville’s German 
church, our beloved patriarch took his last journey 
beyond the confines of his diocese. It would seem that 
he promised his friend, Bishop Wood, at the time of 
the latter’s consecration, to visit him in Philadelphia, 
which until now he had not been able to do. When, 
therefore, the Rev. Charles J. Carter, a native of Ken- 
tucky, but vicar general of Philadelphia, urged him and 
Bishops Spalding and McGill to take part in the con- 
secration of the Assumption (Carter’s church in that 
city) on September 11, 1859, he availed himself of the 
companionship of the Louisville prelate to make the 
long journey.” Doubtless in part to avoid over-fa- 
tigue, on his way home he stopped at Baltimore, where 
he stayed with the Rev. Leonard Obermeyer, pastor 
of Saint Vincent de Paul’s. The Catholic Mirror of 
September 24, 1859, says of his visit there: 


The late important Church proceedings eastward brought several 
distinguished prelates from a distance to aid in the ceremonies, and 
Baltimore was last week favored with the presence of several of 
them on their way home. Right Rev. Richard Pius Miles, the 
venerable Bishop of Nashville, who is now in his seventieth year, 
and the oldest man in the American Hierarchy, but still sprightly 
and active, spent several days with his friend, the pastor of St. 

41 The Guardian, August 27, 1859. 


42 Bishop Spalding to Archbishop Purcell, September 2, 1859 (Notre 
Dame Archives) ; the Guardian, September 10 and 17, 1859. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 553 


Vincent’s. He received and returned the visits of his old friends, 
who were delighted at seeing him again after an absence of seven 
years. 

Most likely the universally beloved and admired man 
of God also broke his homeward journey at the places 
of his former labors, which lay along the route; for this 
was his custom, and he had every reason to believe that 
he would not see them again. On reaching Nashville, 
while he left the more arduous and distant toils of the 
episcopacy to his coadjutor, he still busied himself with 
many matters for the good of religion in his diocese. 
In December he was rejoiced by a visit of his ever true 
friend, Bishop Spalding, and keenly anticipated the 
pleasure of one from the metropolitan of Cincinnati 
on his way back from the consecration of the Right 
Rey. John Quinlan, in New Orleans, for Mobile. Jan- 
uary 1, 1860, Doctor Spalding wrote to Archbishop 
Purcell: 


I was so much disappointed that you did not come to Louisville, 
either in going to or returning from New Orleans. I was in Nash- 
ville about the time you were expected to return, and expected 
to come home with you, if you should come that way from Mobile. 
which would have been probably the best route. Bishop Miles 
was also disappointed, as I had told him to hope for a visit from 
the apostolic band of consecrators. But you went all around us, 
and left us isolated.*? 

Before he went east, Bishop Miles started up his 
little seminary again. He also reorganized the board of 
diocesan counsellors. Father Brown was added to the 
number, and Father D’Arco substituted for Father 
Lynch who had gone to Memphis. Now the holy man’s 
work was over, and he could die in peace of mind. With 
the rainy season, after Christmas, his chronic cough 


43 Notre Dame Archives. 


554 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


grew worse. However, no one saw cause for serious 
alarm, since his recovery in such cases had often been 
almost as sudden as the attack. But in this instance 
it proved somewhat more violent and stubborn than 
usual. 

Friday, February 17, he went about the city. The 
next morning, he was found “sitting before the fire in 
the position which he usually assumed while reciting the 
divine office.” He had not slept all night, and was 
unable to stand alone. Yet, in his thoughtfulness 
for others, he had not called for assistance, lest he should 
deprive the household of their needed rest. Monday 
afternoon, Bishop Whelan gave him the last rites of 
the Church. In the afternoon of Tuesday, February 21, 
1860, the saintly Father of the Church in Tennessee 
expired as he had lived—calm and trustful in God.* 

The Nashville papers of that period gave little space 
to matters religious, especially if they were Catholic. 
However, although deeply absorbed in politics at the 
time, they all noticed Bishop Miles’ death. The Union 
and American of February 22 says: “He was a cour- 
teous, affable gentleman, and highly respected in the 
private walks of life; and by the members of his Church 
he was regarded with the highest degree of love and 
reverence.” The Republican Banner of the same date 
states: “It is with sincere regret that we, this morning, 
are called upon to announce the death of the Right Rev. 
Richard Pius Miles, for a number of years Bishop of 
the Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church of Ten- 
nessee.”’ 

Again, the Banner of February 23 describes how the 
bishop lay in state in the sanctuary of the cathedral, 
and how the people flocked in to pay him their last 

44 The Guardian, March 10, 1860. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 555 


respects. Similarly, in its issue of February 25 it tells 
of the funeral on the yesterday. Here it says: “Owing 
to the suddenness of the demise of Bishop Miles, and 
its occurring in the season of Lent, when all the Bishops 
are engaged in their own dioceses, the oration was post- 
poned until some future time, when it will be delivered 
by the Very Rev. B. J. Spalding, Vicar General of 
Louisville.” However, it states that Bishop Whelan, 
who sang the mass, “pronounced a very excellent eulogy 
upon the life and services of the deceased.” 

In regard to the clergy present, the writer in the 
Banner says he noticed “especially the Very Rev. 
Samuel L. Montgomery, Vicar General of this Diocese, 
who has been an intimate friend and trusted companion 
of Bishop Miles almost from boyhood. He shared his 
labors, Joys, and sorrows, and must be one of the most 
sincere of the many mourners. .. . Seminarians, aco- 
lytes, etc., filled up the number: in the Sanctuary.” 
In like manner, the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati, 
February 25, 1860, declares that “his zeal for the spiri- 
tual and temporal welfare of his flock, and his most 
kind and genial manners will never be forgotten;” and 
then it proceeds to say: 

He was the right man in the right place; and with the aid of 
a small number of devoted fellow-laborers, he did probably ail 
that could be done for the advancement of religion in a State in 
which there were not many native Catholics, and but few induce- 
ments to Catholic immigrants. Nevertheless, he built a handsome 
Cathedral, established a hospital, and male and female schools, 
and neglected not anything for the development of the resources 
of the State in the interests of religion. 

Still more noteworthy is the notice of the man of God 
given in the Guardian, Louisville, Kentucky. Father 
Brown, we fancy, was its author. It is in the issue of 


e 


556 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


March 10, 1860, and begins by stating: “In the death 
of the Right Rev. Richard P. Miles, first Bishop of the 
Diocese of Nashville, the Catholics of Kentucky, Ohio, 
and ‘Tennessee must recognize the loss of one who has 
done much for the extension of the faith in these States. 
He was almost the last of those zealous missionaries 
from whom the elder portion of our native Catholic 
population received instructions in their religious 
duties.” Then the writer proceeds to give a brief out- 
line of the bishop’s life, both in the priesthood and 
in the episcopacy. Next comes an account of his last 
short sickness, after which he says: 

On Wednesday morning, his remains were taken into the church, 
where they remained exposed before the altar until after the 
funeral, which took place on Friday morning. During the whole 
time, thus exposed, the remains were visited by crowds of citizens, 
both Catholics and Protestants, all apparently anxious to manifest 
their regrets for the loss of one who had endeared himself to 
every class of the community. On the evenings of Wednesday 
and Thursday, the office of the dead was read in the church by 
the Right Rev. Bishop Whelan and his clergy. 

A most affecting scene took place on Wednesday morning, im- 
mediately after the remains were carried into the church. The 
day was the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday), and the cere- 
mony of blessing and distributing the ashes was performed by 
Bishop Whelan. With the remains of their beloved Bishop before 
them, how could the people fail to feel deeply the truth of those 
solemn words addressed by the celebrant to the recipients, while 
he made upon their foreheads the sign of the cross: “Remember, 
O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return?” 
The scene was most affecting, and especially so when Bishop 
Whelan, at the end of the ceremony, ascended the steps of the 
altar, which was heavily draped in mourning, and in most eloquent 
and touching terms poured forth the thoughts which stirred his 
own soul, and were busy in the minds of all present. It was an 
occurrence not likely to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 557 


The final funeral rites commenced at nine o’clock on Friday 
morning. High Mass was celebrated by Bishop Whelan, with the 
Very Rev. B. J. Spalding of Louisville as assistant priest, Very 
Rev. J. A. Kelly, Provincial of the Dominicans, as deacon, and 
the Rev. J. H. Lynch of Memphis as master of ceremonies. There 
were also present in the sanctuary the Rev. H. V. Brown of Chat- 
tanooga, and the Revs. Messrs. J. Scollard, J. M. D’Arco, and D. 
Carroll.4° Before the absolution, Bishop Whelan addressed the 
congregation in a short but appropriate sermon, in which he re- 
ferred to some of the facts which we have given above in the life 
of Bishop Miles. The ceremony was closed by the absolution, 
which was pronounced by Bishop Whelan, and the final interment 
of the remains under the High Altar of the Cathedral. 

Never morose, and seldom low-spirited, Bishop Miles had the 
happy faculty, in his social relations, to be able to impart to all 
around him a portion of his own cheerful spirit. He was pious, 
without affectation, charitable to the poor, and kind and affable 
to all. 

Evidently the Guwardian’s printer did not read the 
manuscript correctly in regard to the holy sacrifice 
offered for the deceased prelate. The very description 
of it shows that it was a solemn high, and not merely 
a high, mass. Moreover, the Republican Banner of 
February 25 tells us that it was such, that Father Lynch 
was subdeacon, and that Father Brown acted as master 
of ceremonies. However, this is a minor matter. The 
main point is that it shows how lived, labored, died, 
and was laid to his final rest a noble soul who was, from 
every point of view, a conspicuous ornament alike to 
the Order of Saint Dominic, to the priesthood, and to 
the hierarchy in the United States. 


45 Both the Guardian and the Republican Banner give Father Carroll’s 
initial as D. But the baptismal records at Nashville and other sources 
show that his first name was William. He belonged to the Diocese of 
Albany, New York, and seems to have been in Nashville for a rest or his 
health. 


558 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


To form a just appreciation of his apostolate in 
Tennessee one must not consider merely what he accom- 
plished in itself, but what he did under circumstances 
the most adverse—nay, in spite of obstacles that were 
apparently insuperable. On his arrival in Nashville, 
he found himself alone—without a priest; practically 
without a church; without scrip or purse; without a 
home, or even a place whereon to lay his head. When 
he died, tells us the Catholic Almanac, he left thirteen 
clergymen; fourteen churches, built or under way; six 
chapels; thirty “stations”; a theological seminary; three 
communities of sisters; one academy for girls; nine pa- 
rochial schools; an orphanage; and about twelve thou- 
sand Catholics. But a short time would have been re- 
quired for the resurrection of the academy and orphan 
asylum in Nashville. 

Surely this is no inglorious record, when all is taken 
into consideration. Not always does the efficient and 
faithful laborer receive the credit that is his due. Such 
has largely been the lot of the subject of our narrative. 
Perhaps Archbishop Purcell but speaks the truth, when 
he says that he was the best choice that could have been 
made for Tennessee. Certainly it would have been diffi- 
cult to find another so well fitted for that state, where 
so much prejudice had to be overcome, and so much 
hard work and self-sacrifice were necessary to build up 
the Church. Just also is the appreciation of the T'ele- 
graph, when it emphatically declares that our ambas- 
sador of Christ was the right man in the right place, 
and that he did all that could possibly have been done 
for the cause of religion in his diocese. 

A careful study of Bishop Miles’ life reveals not only 
a charming character, but also a great and holy man 








MOST REV. MOST REV. 
JOSEPH S. ALEMANY THOMAS L. GRACE 





RIGHTS REYV. RIGHTS REV: 
RICHARD P. MILES JAMES WHELAN 


FOUR FRIAR-PREACHER PRELATES IN OR FROM TENNESSEE 


THE CROWNING OF A WELL-SPENT LIFE 559 


and zealous prelate. He was practical, courageous, 
vigilant, resourceful, prudent, judicious—all qualities 
necessary for the success of his work. His labors in 
Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee can never be forgotten. 
There he is still, as he must ever be, loved, esteemed, 
and even revered. His name deserves a distinguished 
place in the annals of our American Church. The 
influence of his life lived on after him, and had its part 
in writing one of the brightest chapters of our eccle- 
siastical history. We can almost picture how it animated 
the noble priests who fearlessly exposed or laid down 
their lives during the successive plagues of yellow fever 
that devastated the western part of Tennessee. 


APPENDIX I 


THE REV. LOUIS HOSTE 


The Rev. Louis Hoste, who had seen longer service in the 
Diocese of Nashville than any other priest at the time of Bishop 
Miles’ death, was born in France about 1808. Lyons seems to 
have been his native city. There he studied, and was ordained 
on June 1, 1833. The next eight years he spent as a professor, 
apparently in the preparatory seminary of Lyons. With the per- 
mission of his ordinary, he offered his services for Tennessee 
while Bishop Miles was in Europe in search of help, and arrived 
at Nashville before the close of 1841. For a quarter of a century 
he did yeoman service for that diocese. 

During the Civil War, although his sympathies were strongly 
with the south, Father Hoste gave spiritual aid to Catholic soldiers 
in the opposing armies. The distressful condition in which the 
strife left Tennessee broke the good priest’s heart. Accordingly, 
at the end of the war (1865), he returned to France, where he 
seems to have remained for two years. In 1867, we find him at 
New Iberia, Louisiana. Thence, a year later, he was brought to 
New Orleans, where he labored until 1881, when he retired, and 
went to spend his remaining years in the quiet of the Monastery 
of Gethsemani, Nelson County, Kentucky. Here, however, he 
took charge of the little parish then belonging to the Trappist 
Fathers. The present abbot of that institution, the Right Rev. 
Edmond M. Obrecht, writes that the venerable guest “‘edified the 
community with his piety and devotion to the duties committed 
to his care.” In 1886, he was forced by illness and debility to go 
to Saints Mary and Elizabeth’s Hospital, Louisville, where he 
died on February 15, 1888. He is said to have been one of 
Bishop Miles’ best friends and most ardent admirers. He is 


buried at Gethsemani-! 


1 For further information see text passim. 


560 


APPENDIX I 561 


THE VERY REV. SAMUEL LOUIS MONTGOMERY, 
Ory LG: 


Father Samuel Montgomery was born in Maryland, January 
9, 1789, and was the second of the ten children of Charles and 
Mary Ann (Elder) Montgomery. He went to Kentucky with 
his parents about 1795. He was educated, received the Domin- 
ican habit, made his religious profession, and was ordained with 
Bishop Miles. Besides teaching in Saint Thomas’ College and at 
Saint Rose’s Priory, in Kentucky, where he took an important 
part in the parochial work attached to that institution, he spent 
some years on the missions in that state and in Ohio. His zeal, 
charity, gentle manners, and good nature are still spoken of, after 
a lapse of nearly three quarters of a century, in the Dominican 
parish in Washington County, Kentucky—which shows the lasting 
impression made by his pastoral labors there. 

These good qualities, together with a splendid judgment and 
rare prudence, led to his appointment as vicar general by Bishop 
Miles, after whose death he was placed in the same position by 
Bishop Whelan. No priest in Nashville was more loved or trusted 
than Father Montgomery. There his memory is held in benedic- 
tion. He died rather suddenly on Thanksgiving Day, November 
26, 1868. The Freeman’s Journal of December 12, 1863, says 
that “he was followed to the grave by a large number of sorrowing 
friends, .. . [and] was truly a man without guile, a successful 
missionary, and a model priest.” He is now buried at Saint 
Rose’s, in Kentucky.? 


FATHER JAMES ALOYSIUS ORENGO 


Father Orengo was born on January 15, 1820, at Castel Vittorio, 
Liguria, Italy. His parents were Louis and Bianca (Rebaudi) 
Orengo. When a youth of fifteen or sixteen years of age, he 
entered the Order of Saint Dominic, but chose the Province of 
Rome in order to avoid military conscription under the Pied- 
montese government. In religion he took the name of Aloysius. 
Doubtless it was at Viterbo that he received the habit, and made 
his novitiate, pronouncing the religious vows in 1836 or 1887, 


2 For further information see text passim. 


ayy 


562 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


He studied in the Eternal City for several years, but was sent 
to Lucca in the fall of 1841. There he most likely received the 
priesthood, which was in 1843. From November that year until 
September. 18, 1844, he was again at Viterbo. No doubt his 
desire for the American missions had been aroused by Bishop 
Miles at the time of his visit to Rome. Now therefore, that his 
studies were completed, Father Orengo proceeded to the Eternal 
City, where he received the degree of Lector in Sacred Theology, 
October 17, 1844, and started at once for the United States in 
company with Fathers Grace, Young, D’Arco and Francis S. 
Vilarrasa, the last of whom afterwards founded the Province of 
the Holy Name in California. 

The little band of Friars Preacher was headed by Father 
George A. J. Wilson, the American provincial who had been in 
Rome. Father Orengo was first sent to Saint Rose’s, where ke 
remained until the spring of 1848. Then he went to Tennessee, 
on whose missions he labored for twenty-five years. Certainly no 
priest is mentioned either more frequently or in terms of greater 
praise, affection, and esteem in the notes and letters sent to Fathers 
Walsh and Larkin and still preserved at Nashville. Father Orengo 
was emphatically one of 'Tennessee’s apostles. He established 
numerous missions around Nashville. He built churches at Frank- 
lin, McEwen, Columbia, Pulaski, Edgefield Junction, Tracey City, 
Gallatin, Humboldt, Brownsville, Grand Junction, Covington, and 
Jackson; extricated those of Clarksville and Shelbyville from a 
heavy burden of debt; and purchased ground for others at Trenton, 
Fayetteville, and Union City. 

The ever alert missionary served under three bishops and an 
administrator, by all of whom he was trusted and admired. Middle 
and western Tennessee were the principal theater of his activities; 
yet he was not a stranger in any part of the state. In 1873 or 
1874 he returned to Italy, but lived on to the extreme old age of 
eighty-nine years, seventy-two or seventy-three of which he had 

3 Attention has been called in the text to the fact that Father Orengo 
wrote on the title-page of Gury’s Moral Theology (which he gave Father 
Gazzo) that he went to Nashville in March, 1847; but that the baptismal 
records at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, show that he did not go there until 
March, 1848. He had forgotten the precise year. On the fly-leaf of the 
same book he wrote the list of the churches which he built, etc., as given 


above; but he does not mention that at McEwen. Father Gazzo, however, 
assured us that he also built a church there. 


APPENDIX I 563 


worn the habit of Saint Dominic, and had been a priest of God 
for more than sixty-five. He died on March 18, 1909, in the 
Convent of La Quercia, near Viterbo. We have heard more than 
one regret that his life has not been written, for it would make a 
story of intense interest.* 


THE REV. HENRY VINCENT BROWN 


Father Brown is always spoken of as of Puritan descent. How- 
ever, Syracuse and Rochester, New York, as well as New England, 
are given as the place of his birth. Possibly he was born in New 
England, but spent a part of his early life in those two cities of 
the Empire State. On his conversion he became a Catholic through 
and through. Bishop Whelan called him to Nashville, and made 
him one of the vicars general of the diocese; but after the ap- 
pointment of the Right Rev. Patrick A. Feehan as bishop, he 
returned to his beloved Chattanooga, and spent the rest of his 
Hires there: 

Father Brown merited the love and high regard which he enjoyed 
among all classes wherever he labored. He was a perfect gentle- 
man, well educated, of fine appearance, intelligent, zealous, chari- 
table, and a good orator. Few priests of his day were more widely 
known. He rendered a splendid service to religion on both sides 
of the combat during the Civil War; still, though born in the east, 
he gave his preference to the cause that was lost. Apparently 
a short while before Bishop Miles’ death, Father Brown began a 
magnificent stone church at Chattanooga, the foundation of which 
either he or Father Biemans had completed when the war broke 
out.” The destruction of this by the northern army for military 
purposes must have rent Father Brown’s heart. 

His death, at Chattanooga, April 14, 1870, was a shock not 
only to the Catholics of that place and Nashville, but also to 
liberal-minded people of every shade of religious belief and walk 
in life. He is buried at Nashville. Father Brown was another 

4 For further information see text passim. 

5 The Almanac of 1861 places Father Brown at Nashville and Father 
Biemans at Chattanooga. Whether the latter actually took charge at Chat- 
tanooga or not can only be determined definitely by the church records 
there, which we did not consult. Father William Walsh’s article on Chat- 


tanooga, in Facts, August 4, 1894, does not mention him among the city’s 
pastors. 


564 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


of Bishop Mile’s intimate friends and strong admirers. The 
Freeman’s Journal of April 30, 1870, after speaking of his tem- 
poral efforts for the Catholics of Chattanooga, says: ‘“These are 
the visible monuments of his labors, but more enduring than these 
will be the love and esteem which he inspired in the hearts of his 
parishioners and of all with whom he came in contact. ... His 
congregation will long mourn the loss of Father Brown, and few 
among them can yet appreciate the magnitude of the loss.” ® 


THE REV. JOSEPH L. BIEMANS 


Father Joseph Biemans, as told in note forty-one of Chapter 
XIX, was born at Edeghem, not far from Antwerp, Belgium, 
November 3, 1831. The date of his arrival in Tennessee, we are 
inclined to think, was after his ordination, and some time in the 
summer or early fall of 1855; for his name does not appear 
in the Catholic Almanac until 1856, and his first record 
at Knoxville was on September 29, 1855. Five years he labored 
hard and faithfully through eastern Tennessee, leaving an impres- 
sion that lasts to this day. The Almanac for 1861 places him at 
Chattanooga, but with Knoxville and its former missions still under 
his charge. His last record at Knoxville is dated December 1, 
1860, for he was soon succeeded there by the Rev. J. A. Bergrath. 
How long Father Biemans remained in Chattanooga, where it was 
evidently intended that he should take the place of Father Brown, 
we do not know. However, as he soon left the country, it is 
probable that the Civil War turned his mind towards other parts.‘ 

From Tennessee Father Biemans went to England. There he 
labored in and around London until 1893, when, broken in health, 
he returned to Belgium. After two years of sickness, he died, 
October 3, 1895, in his native Edeghem, and was there laid to his 
final rest.§ 


FATHER ANTHONY RAYMOND GANGLOFF 


Father Anthony R. Gangloff was born at “Danne et Quatre 
Wann,” Alsace, about 1822, and was one of the eldest of a family 


6 For further information see text passim. 

7 See note 5 above. 

8 Much of this information is taken from Father Biemans’ mortuary 
card, for the correction of errors in which see text. 


APPENDIX I 565 


of eleven children. He had nearly completed his education, when 
his parents, Nicholas and Appolonia (Wahl) Gangloff, brought 
him to Perry County, Ohio. October 23, 1843, he received the 
Dominican habit at Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, and made his relig- 
ious profession at the same place on November 1, 1844. He 
pursued his ecclesiastical studies there and at Saint Joseph’s, in 
Ohio, and was ordained by Bishop Purcell in Saint Peter’s Church, 
Chillicothe, Ohio, on September 3, 1849. From that time until 
he went to Memphis, Ohio and Kentucky were his fields of labor. 

Bishop Whelan called Father Gangloff to Nashville late in 
1860. There he became pastor of Saint John’s Church, in Edge- 
field. Father Gangloff had now gone into consumption. Accord- 
ingly, with the permission of his superiors, he returned to Ohio, 
where he took temporary charge of Saint Michael’s, Madisonville.® 
He died at Saint John’s Hospital, Cincinnati, June 9, 1864, aged 
forty-two years. At the request of his family, who had now 
moved to Piqua, in the same state, he was buried there. The 
Telegraph of June 15, 1864, says of him: “During a long illness 
he was faithful to say Mass, when scarcely able to stand at the 
altar, and attended to his pastoral cares, when apparently tottering 
on the brink of the grave. He was a man of truly sacerdotal life 
and manners, and will long be remembered by his Rev. brethren 
in the ministry, whom he greatly edified.”’ 1° 


THE REV. JOHN SCOLLARD 


The first mention of Father John Scollard we found is in the 
Catholic Almanac for 1851, when he was pastor of Saint Paul’s, 
Princeton, New Jersey, and also had under his charge the Church 
of Saint Rose of Lima, at Freehold. When and where he was 
born, or when and where ordained, we did not discover. He 
labored on the missions named until he went to Tennessee. The 
late Father Eugene Gazzo used to say that, when the Civil War 
broke out, Father Scollard became a chaplain in the Confederate 
army, getting a horse from Father Orengo for the purpose. After 
the war (that is, in 1866,) we find him at Jackson, Louisiana, 
in the Diocese of New Orleans. In 1869, he was changed to Amity, 


9 Madisonville is now incorporated in Cincinnati. 
10 For his work in Memphis see text. 


566 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


where he seems to have died in 1876, for his name no longer 
appears in the Almanac.11 


FATHER JOHN HYACINTH LYNCH 


Father J. H. Lynch was born in Zanesville, Ohio, June 22, 1825, 
his parents being Patrick and Christina (Sedwidge) Lynch. He 
had two brothers, one of whom died in young manhood, and the 
other went to California. All his five sisters became Dominican 
Nuns. Father Lynch received the habit of Saint Dominic at Saint 
Joseph’s, in Ohio, January 19, 1851, and made his religious pro- 
fession on February 8, 1852. Archbishop Purcell ordained him 
in the chapel of the Ursuline Sisters, Brown County, Ohio, July 
18, 1854. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Christina Lynch also 
entered the Order of Saint Dominic, where she had her own 
daughter for novice mistress. 

Father Lynch had an unusual variety of priestly experiences. 
Between the time of his ordination and that when he was sent 
to Nashville, he labored in Ohio and Kentucky. He was recalled 
to Ohio from Memphis at the outbreak of the Civil War; but a few 
months later we find him at Lexington, Kentucky, being sent there 
by his provincial with Father Peter €. Coll, O.P., in response to 
Bishop George A. Carrell’s appeal for help. It was a trying and 
perilous post which Father Lynch filled to the satisfaction of his 
superiors until the summer of 1863, when he was sent to his native 
City of Zanesville. 

From that time, he toiled in many parts of the United States, 
either on parochial missions or in various parishes attended by 
his Order. In 1878, however, he returned to Zanesville, where 
he spent the remainder of his long life. He died in Zanesville on 
August 7, 1908, aged eighty-three years, and was buried at Saint 
Joseph’s Convent, near Somerset. Father Lynch was a very intel- 
ligent and well-read man, deeply religious, zealous, faithful to his 
priestly duties, and scrupulously exact in the observances of. his 
state of life. He possessed an extraordinary voice, was an enter- 
taining conversationalist, and in his younger days drew large crowds 


11 The fact that Father Scollard was on the board of diocesan con- 
sultors shows the high regard in which he was held in Nashville. 


APPENDIX I 567 


by his eloquence. In spite of his age, he left a host of friends, 
many of whom still live in Zanesville.!* 


FATHER STEPHEN BYRNE 


Patrick and Mary (Fitzsimmons) Byrne were the parents of 
-Father Stephen Byrne, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, De- 
cember 25, 1832. It is said that his mother was sixty years of 
age at the time of his birth. He was educated abroad, and seems 
to have studied for the priesthood there, but temporarily gave up 
the idea. Shortly after coming to America, he began to teach in 
Saint Joseph’s College, Somerset, Ohio, and at the same time read 
philosophy and theology under the Dominican Fathers attached 
to that institution. There he received the habit of the Order, 
October 10, 1854, made his religious profession exactly a twelve- 
month later, and was ordained to the priesthood (August 4, 1856) 
by Archbishop Purcell. 

From this time until his death, November 23, 1887, Father 
Byrne’s labors were varied, ubiquitous, fruitful, tireless; for his 
many-sided talent and cheerful spirit of co-operation rendered 
him useful in almost any line of work. He taught at the college 
in Ohio, was master of novices, held the office of superior, preached 
and lectured throughout the country east of the Mississippi River, 
and gave or helped on many parochial missions.*> He founded 
Saint Antoninus’ Priory, Newark, New Jersey. In 1877 he was 
elected provincial, but resigned his office two years later because 
of ill health and a desire to have more time for labor that lay near 
to his heart. While provincial, he established Holy Rosary Priory 
in Minneapolis. Always ailing though he was, he never ceased 
from toil of one kind or another. Although he died in Minne- 
apolis, his love for Saint Joseph’s Convent, in Ohio, caused the 
superiors to have him buried there. 

Doubtless that which will especially perpetuate Father Byrne’s 
memory in future generations is his literary work and efforts in 
behalf of Catholic colonization. He translated several spiritual 
books, wrote a number of biographical brochures, and contributed 
many historical articles to the Catholic papers. Perhaps no one 

12 For his work in Tennessee see text. 


13 Father Byrne was called away from Memphis in June, 1860; but he 
labored there again at a later date. 


568 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


strove more fruitfully (certainly none with greater energy and 
perseverance) in the cause of Catholic colonization. By far the 
greater part of his writings, whether in the form of brochures or 
articles, were on this subject. ‘These were scattered throughout 
the country, were read by hundreds of thousands, and were admired 
for their statistical lore. The story of his life, if well written, 
would make a volume full of interest and instruction. At the time 
of his death, the editor of the Catholic Columbian says that the 
event has “filled many hearts with great sadness,’ speaks of his 
character, and then adds: 

“He was also, during his life, a studious scholar, fully informed 
on those subjects that would tend to promote the good of our holy 
religion, and in all had the beautiful simplicity of the child. He 
contributed frequently to the columns of the Columbian. He was 
the historian of his Order, and had he lived longer, might have 
still further enriched that department of our literature. We of the 
Columbian who knew the deceased well, and loved him for his 
many noble qualities, his grand character, and happy geniality, 
will miss him; and unite our prayers with the thousands that will 
ascend for him to the Throne of Grace, that he may be admitted 
to eternal happiness.” 


THE REV. ANTHONY VOGEL 


Of Father John Anthony Vogel we discovered but little more 
than has been narrated in the text of Bishop Miles’ life. He 
seems to have been born in Germany. He spent some years in 
Louisville, Kentucky, before he studied for the priesthood, and 
made many friends there. He entered the seminary at Bardstown 
for the Diocese of Louisville, but later requested that he might 
give his services to Bishop Miles. Bishop Spalding consented, and 
the young man was then sent to the seminary in Cincinnati, where 
Archbishop Purcell, apparently without charge to his new ordinary, 
kept him until ready for ordination. 

Father Vogel certainly labored with great zeal and effect at 
the Church of the Assumption in Nashville until the outbreak of 
the Civil War. The Catholic Almanac was not issued for the years 
1862 and 1863. His name does not appear in that for 1864, or 
afterwards. Quite probably, like several of the priests of Ten- 


APPENDIX I 569 


nessee, he became a chaplain in the Confederate forces and fell on 
the field of honor, as did Father Emmeran Bliimel, O.S.B., in the 
eastern part of the state. Perhaps some day a record may be 
discovered of Father Vogel’s noble deeds and heroic death in one 
of the bloody battles of the south.# 


FATHER JANUARIUS MANNES D’ARCO 


Father J. M. D’Arco was born in Naples, Italy, May 24, 1818. 
At the age of nineteen years he entered the Order of Saint Dominic 
at the Convent of San Domenico Maggiore, that city, and was there 
ordained by Cardinal Riario Sforza on December 18, 1841. Octo- 
ber 17, 1844, along with Father Orengo, he obtained the degree 
of Lector in Sacred Theology in Rome, and started at once for the 
United States. His first field of toil was Perry County, Ohio. 
In 1847 he was sent to aid Father John T. Van den Broek at 
Little Chute, Wisconsin, but returned to Saint Joseph’s before 
the close of 1849. Here he now remained until he went to Ten- 
nessee with Bishop Whelan. At Nashville he was secretary, chan- 
cellor, and one of the diocesan counsellors. 

After the resignation of Bishop Whelan, Father D’Arco obtained 
the permission of the Order’s Master General, the Most Rey. 
Alexander V. Jandel, to become a missionary apostolic, and went 
to Oxford, Ohio (in the Diocese of Cincinnati), where he labored 
until 1873.1° That year he entered the Diocese of Vincennes 
(now Indianapolis), and was stationed at Liberty, Indiana. Here 
he labored on until 1894, when, broken down by age and infirmity, 
he retired from active work. About the same time, as he feared 
that he could not again adapt himself to community life, he became 
secularized. He continued to live at Liberty until 1898, when 
he went to Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Indianapolis, dying there 
on June 1, 1899. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, 
Indianapolis. 


FATHER JAMES AEGIDIUS (GILES) MARSCHAL 


Of Father James A. Marschal’s early life we know only that he 
was born in Prussian Poland, entered the Order of Saint Dominic 


14 For further information see text. 

15 Father D’Arco’s last record at Nashville is dated July 6, 1863. 

16 Father Marschal’s name is practically always given as Moshall or 
Marshall in the Almanac; but this is incorrect. 


570 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


there, went to Rome after the suppression of his province by the 
German government, and received letters patent from Father A. 
V. Jandel, the Dominican Master General, to come to the United 
States as a missionary apostolic. The first record of him here 
places him at Manayunk, Pennsylvania, in 1854. Thence he went 
to Maine, from there to Wisconsin, and then to Tennessee, where 
he was stationed at Clarksville. The Freeman’s Journal of Novem- 
ber 3, 1860, shows that during his pastorate at Clarksville he was 
held up by robbers, and thought to be killed. Possibly this was 
why he did not remain longer in Tennessee. From there he went 
back to the Diocese of Philadelphia, remaining in it for four years. 
Late in 1856, he went to the Diocese of London, Ontario, and was 
stationed at Ingersoll. Thence he departed for Chicago, and after 
some years returned to Europe, where he died on September 4, 1893. 
Wherever he labored, Father Marschal left a good reputation 
for zeal, candor, and priestly deportment. He was an intellectual 
and highly educated man. He spoke English, French, German, 
and Polish perfectly. This gift of languages seems to have caused 
him to be placed in charge of “mixed”’ congregations which were 
troublesome in themselves, in addition to the difficulty inherent in 
such a care. Besides, he was of a nervous temperament, and per- 
haps somewhat tactless, while the letters patent of missionary 
apostolic given him by his highest superior made him independent 
of the Order’s authorities in this country, whose direction might 
have rendered him a more stable and useful harvester of souls. 


FATHER JOHN THOMAS NEALIS 


Father John T. Nealis, who was born in New York City about 
1833, was the son of Thomas and Mary (Harrison) Nealis. How 
early in life he developed a religious vocation may be seen by the 
fact that he became a postulant at Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio, in 1847. 
Thence he went to Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky, where he received 
the habit of Saint Dominic, September 6, 1851, and made his 
religious profession on the eighth of the same month in 1852. 
Archbishop Purcell ordained him at Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio. 
August 4, 1856. Then he was returned to Saint Rose’s, where 
he remained, with the exception of a few months which he spent 


APPENDIX I 571 


in Washington City to take the place of one of the fathers at 
Saint Dominic’s, until stationed at Memphis.” 

Father Nealis had already developed into an excellent preacher. 
This combined with his zeal, charity, genial manners, and priestly 
deportment to win the hearts of the hospitable southern people. 
From Memphis, however, he soon went to Chattanooga which had 
been left witheut a priest. His last record in the Bluff City is 
dated September 5, 1861. Late in 1862, while attending some of 
his stations, he was maliciously shot by a ruffian, and narrowly 
escaped death. In fact, though he continued his labors and did 
not lose his spirit of optimism, he never fully recovered from the 
wound he received. Near the close of 1863, he was brought to 
Nashville, and placed in charge of Saint John’s, in Edgefield. 
The injury inflicted on him at Chattanooga had left him subject 
to sinking and fainting spells, in one of which he fell from the 
window of his room at the cathedral rectory on the night of March 
18, 1864, and was instantly killed. 

With one voice tradition and the journalistic literature of the 
day tell us that Father Nealis was a most exemplary priest who, 
while he labored heart and soul for the salvation of others, never 
forgot his own. No wonder his sudden and unexpected death 
brought deep sorrow to his many friends far and wide. He is 
buried at his alma mater, Saint Rose’s, in Kentucky.1® 


THE RIGHT REV. JAMES WHELAN 


As yet no documentary record of the place of Bishop James 
Whelan’s birth has been discovered other than that this honor 
belongs to Ireland. The most reliable authorities say that he was 
born in historic Kilkenny. Both June 8 and December 8, 1823, are 
given as the date of his birth. Tradition tells us that his mother 
was only fourteen or fifteen years of age when she married, and 
that he was the eldest of two children. He was taken to Dublin in 
infancy, and brought thence to New York City. In these two 


17 Numerous inaccuracies are given in sketches of Father Nealis’ earlier 
life. The above is based on the church records of the places named. 

18 Despite the clear, calm, and well-reasoned decision of the coroner 
and his jury, who pronounced Father Nealis’ death evidently accidental, 
a few evil-minded bigots sought to create the impression that the good 
priest committed suicide. However, they only succeeded in bringing odium 
upon themselves. 


572 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


places he received his early education. From the beginning, he 
had attracted attention by his rare mind, remarkable memory, and 
love of study. 

Father Andrew Byrne, then pastor of Saint James, New York, 
and later the first bishop of Little Rock, Arkansas, carefully fos- 
tered a vocation to the religious life which he detected in the 
promising Irish youth, and took him to the Very Rev. N. D. 
Young who had most likely gone to the east to see his nephew, 
Brother N. R. Young, off for Rome. This was in the spring or 
early summer of 1838. The next year, now that he had nearly 
completed his classical course, James Whelan went to Saint Rose's, 
in Kentucky, where he received the habit of Saint Dominic on 
May 1, 1839, and took his vows of religion on June 29, 1840. 
Brother James, for in the Order he took the name which he had 
received at baptism, mastered philosophy and theology with strik- 
ing thoroughness, and was the first member of the province to 
obtain the degree of Lector of Sacred Theology at home. August 
2, 1846, Bishop Purcell ordained him at Saint Joseph’s, near 
Somerset, Ohio. 

From this time, Father Whelan rose rapidly in his province, 
holding many offices of trust and responsibility. In October, 1854, 
he was elected provincial.!9 This position he filled for four years. 
Traditions in Saint Joseph’s Province still exist of the ability and 
success with which he guided its destinies at the time. From the 
same source we learn that only the strong prejudice then existing 
against a provincial immediately succeeding himself prevented 
his re-election in 1858. Father Whelan was a philosopher, a 
theologian, a scientist, and a historian of a high order. During 
his provincialship, he gave missions, preached, and lectured in va- 
rious parts of the country. Everywhere, for he had an excellent 
voice, a fine personal appearance, a good delivery, graceful ges- 
tures, he established a reputation as a pulpit orator. Besides, he 
was a priest and religious of irreproachable life, as well as zealous 
and possessed of a charming personality.°° 

19 He was elected provincial at the age of one and thirty years, and was 
the youngest person who has ever held that office in the province. 

20 The writer has often heard old persons, both lay and clerical, in Ohio 


and Kentucky speak of the facts given here, and they are borne out by 
many statements in print. 


APPENDIX I 573 


These were the qualities that caused his name to be sent to 
Rome in connection with more than one see. From the time of his 
installation at Nashville, he entered on his new duties with an 
admirable zeal and capacity which won the hearts of all.21_ Un- 
fortunately, his lot in Tennessee was cast in trying times. Scarcely 
had he his work well in hand, when the Civil War broke out. 
Perhaps no bishop from the north with Federal sympathies could 
have met with much success in Tennessee or Kentucky at this 
period. The few accounts and records of the day show that Bishop 
Whelan did his best impartially to administer to the spiritualities 
of the Catholics on both sides of the fratricidal strife. But it 
was practically impossible for him to steer between Scylla and 
Charybdis. 

Federal sympathies filled his breast, for he was strongly op- 
posed to a dismemberment of the Union, and in his honesty he 
made no effort to conceal his convictions. . Naturally this at once 
alienated from him the affections of by far the greater part of his 
flock. A number of his priests had become chaplains in the army, 
which left the parishes without shepherds; the costly stone foun- 
dation of the church in Chattanooga was torn down; his own cathe- 
dral had been converted into a military hospital; everywhere his 
diocese was in ruins; by not a few his fervent exhortation (at ben- 
ediction during a novena for the protection of heaven just before 
the fall of Nashville) to the Catholics that, should the worse come, 
they would put their trust in God, and not forget their religion, 
was construed as the act of an enemy.** Numbers of the officers 
(General Rosecrans, for instance,) and soldiers from Ohio were 
his personal friends. With these he openly fraternized, and this 
was bitterly resented alike by Catholics and non-Catholics. 

Under the circumstances, all this was but natural—nay, might 
have been expected. However, it was more than the zealous 
bishop could stand. He was a victim of circumstances. His health 
failed; his nerves became shattered; he felt that, even after the 

21 See text. 

22 This exhortation is still spoken of in Nashville. Some years ago, 
several old persons of intelligence who were present on the occasion told 
the writer that the people, owing to the excitement of the times, simply 
lost their heads, and could find nothing too harsh to say against Bishop 
Whelan, though he spoke only for their good. The late Father P. J. 


Gleeson said that he had investigated the matter, and found it as given 
above. 


574 THE FATHER OF THE CHURCH IN TENNESSEE 


war, he would be able to effect but little good for religion in Ten- 
nessee. Accordingly, he resigned his miter and retired to the quiet 
of cloister life at Saint Joseph’s, in Ohio.22 Somewhat later, he 
went to Zanesville, where he spent the remainder of his years in 
prayer, study, and scientific investigation. He had a facile pen 
as well as a logical mind. His Catena Aurea, or Golden Chain of 
Evidences of Papal Infallibility, though brief and pithy, is one 
of the best works we have on the subject in the English language. 
Bishop Whelan died in Zanesville on February 18, 1878. He long 
felt that his death would come suddenly, as it did in a stroke of 
apoplexy, and he prepared for it by a saintly life. He is buried 
in the cemetery of Saint Joseph’s Convent.*4 

23 We did not discover the date of his resignation. Reuss (Biographical 
Cyclopedia, p. 107) and Shea (The Defenders of Our Faith, p. 307) say 
that it was in 1864. Father J. A. Kelly, who was appointed administrator 
of the diocese, signs himself as such in the baptismal records on October 
25, 1863. Probably Bishop Whelan insisted that Archbishop Kenrick 


should appoint an administrator at this time, though he had not yet actually 
resigned. 

24 Clarke’s Lives of the Deceased Bishops (III, 292-294) is grossly 
unjust to Bishop Whelan, and we are glad to learn that an unbiased study 
is being made of his life. 


APPENDIX II 


There were two foreign sources from which our American 
Church, and especially our bishops, received an aid which we 
should never forget. One was the French Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Faith; the other an Austrian society, known as the 
Leopoldine Association, which was established specifically to help 
the missions of the United States. We found no record of any 
aid that the Leopoldine Association gave Bishop Miles; yet it 
is not unlikely that he was benefited by it from time to time. The 
French society was a regular benefactor of his; and the following 
list shows the amounts it gave him year by year from 1839 to 
1858. We could not find the volumes of the Annales which should 
have specified the sum given to him for 1859 and 1860; so we 
do not know how much the society allowed Tennessee these two 


years. 
1839. 26,827 Francs. 1849. 6,000 Francs. 
1840. 33,900 “ L850 bIb00 0S 
1841.) 24,600). © )* VSoly 5,000. ee 
18 aa eer oS O40 aa 1852. 18,000 <“ 
1843.° 21,560 “ L855.0 910,000 ui) 5 
1844. 28,500 “ LSh4r 6.0008 4 
1845. 18,500 “ 1855.. 8,000 “< 
1846. 15,872  “ 1856. 7,000 “* 
1847, 15.600 4". “ 1857....16.000' 41)“ 
1848. 5,040 “ 1S 56 eS 000 thane 


Thus the Church of Tennessee received 219,839 francs from the 
French Society for the Propagation of the Faith in the twenty 
years from 1839 to 1858. If we allow six thousand francs each 
for 1859 and 1860, this would bring the amount up to 231,839 
francs. Thus, valuing the franc at twenty cents, Bishop Miles 
received about $58,000 from this source for his poor diocese. 
While this amount of money was by no means sufficient for all his 
needs, we can but wonder how he could have managed without it. 
The story of his life shows the good works to which it was devoted. 


575 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I. PRINICIPAL MANUSCRIPT SOURCES 


Vatican Archives of the Secretary of Briefs; Archives of the 
Propaganda down to 1830; and Archives of the Dominican Master 
General, and of the Convent of San Clemente, Rome.—Archives 
of the Dominican Fathers in Belgium, Holland, England, and 
Ireland. 

Diocesan Archives of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Louis- 
ville, and Nashville—Catholic Archives of America, Notre 
Dame University.—Archives of Saint Joseph’s Province of 
Dominicans.—Archives of Georgetown University.—Records and 
Archives of Saint Rose’s Church and Priory, Springfield, Kentucky, 
of Saint Joseph’s Church and Priory, Somerset, Ohio, and of Saint 
Peter’s, Memphis.—Archives of Mount Saint Joseph’s Academy, 
Cincinnati, and of Nazareth Academy, Kentucky.—Church Rec- 
ords of Holy Trinity, Somerset; Saint Thomas’, Zanesville; Saint 
John’s, Canton; and Saint Mary’s, Temperanceville (all these in 
Ohio).—Church Records of the cathedral, Nashville, Immaculate 
Conception, Knoxville, and Saints Peter and Paul’s, Chattanooga, 
Tennessee. 

Records of the Land Office and Registers of Deeds and Wills, 
Annapolis, Maryland (state documents).—Registers of Deeds and 
Wills, Leonardtown, La Plata, and Marlborough, Maryland.— 
Registers of Deeds, Frankfort and Morganfield, and of Deeds, 
Wills, and Marriages, Bardstown, Kentucky.—Records of Deeds, 
Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis, ‘Tennessee. 

Diaries of Bishops Flaget (1812-1813) and Rosati, and of 
Fathers John A. Bokel and Joseph A. Kelly.—Father Raymond 
Palmer’s Anglia Dominicana.—Father Stephen Byrne’s rough 
sketch (in pencil) of Saint Joseph’s Province; and his brief his- 
tories of Saint Rose’s, Kentucky, Saint Joseph’s, Ohio, and 
Saint Peter’s, Memphis.—Acts of the provincial chapter of 1837. 


II. PRINTED SOURCES AND OTHERS WHICH MAY 
BE CONSIDERED AS BELONGING TO THAT: 
CLASS 


Indirizzo alla Pieta dei Fedeli, etc., (a circular letter addressed 
to the people of Italy by Bishop Fenwick, and printed at Rome 


576 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 577 


in December, 1823).—Acta Capitulorum Provinciae Angliae, 
London, 1918.—Archives of Maryland, 41 vols.—Bullarium de 
Propaganda Fide, Vol. V.—The Calvert Papers, Nos. 28, 34, 35 
of the Fund Publications of the Maryland Historical Society.— 
The Catholic Almanacs (now called Catholic Directories), from 
1822 to 1896.—Concilium Plenarium. ... Baltimori Habitum 
Anno 1825, Baltimore, 1853.—Concilia Provincialia Baltimori 
Habita ab Anno 1829 usque ad Annum 1849, Baltimore, 1851.— 
Hernaez (Rey. Francis X.), Coleccion de Bulas, Breves y Otros 
Documentos relativos a la Iglesia de America y Filipinas, 2 vols., 
Brussels, 1879.—WuireE (Rev. Andrew), Relatio Itineris in Mary- 
landiam, No. 7 of Fund Publications. 

BaLpwin (Jane, and later Jane Baldwin Cotton) and Henry 
(Roberta Bolling), Maryland Calendar of Wills, 7 vols., Baltimore, 
1901-1925.—BrumBauGu (Gaius M.), Maryland Records: Coloni- 
al, Revolutionary, County, and Church, Baltimore, 1915.—Camp- 
BELL (Rev John P.), Nashville Directory, for 1853-1854, for 1855- 
1856, and for 1857.—The First Census of the United States, 1790 
—Maryland. 


III. WORKS PRINCIPALLY CONSULTED 


Apair (James), History of the American Indians, London, 
1775.—ALBRIGHT, (Edward), Early History of Middle Tennessee, 
Nashville, 1909.—Aturrpina (Rev. Herman J.), A History of the 
Church in the Diocese of Vincennes, Indianapolis, 1883; and The 
Diocese of Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, 1907.—Atsop (George), 4 
Character of the Province of Maryland (No. 15 of Fund Publica- 
tions), Baltimore, 1888.—Auizoa (Rev. John), Manual of Uni- 
versal Church History (Pabisch-Byrne translation), Vol. III, 
Cincinnati, 1878.—Atrwater (Caleb), A History of Ohio, Natural 
and Civil, Cincinnati, 1838. | 

Bancrorr (George), History of the United States, (24th ed.), 
10 vols., Boston, 1872.— Bozman (John L.), A Sketch of the His- 
tory of Maryland, Baltimore, 1811; and The History of Maryland, 
2 vols., Baltimore, 1837.—Brown, (B. F.), Maryland not a Roman 
Catholic Colony, Baltimore, 1876.—Browne (William H.), Mary- 
land, The History of a Palatinate, Boston, 1888; and George 
Calvert and Cecilius Calvert, Barons of Baltimore, New York, 
1890.—Bruce (H. Addington), Daniel Boone and the Wilderness 
Road, New York, 1916.—Bryant (William C.), A Popular His- 
tory of the United States, 4 vols., New York, 1888-1890.—Bryant 
and Fuuiuer, History of the Upper Ohio Valley, 2 vois., Madison, 
Wisconsin, 1890.—Burns (Rev. James A.), The Catholic School 
System in the United States, Its Principles, Origin, and Estab- 
lishment, New York, 1908; and The Growth and Development of 
the Catholic School System in the United States, New York, 


38 


578 THE FATHER OF THE CHUORCH IN TENNESSEE 


1912.—Burver (Mann), A History of the Commonwealth of Ken- 
tucky, Louisville, 1834. 

Carr (John), Harly Times in Middle Tennessee, Nashville, 
1857.—CavanauGcH (Rev. John), The Priests of Holy Cross, 
Notre Dame Press.—Cuaumers (George), Political Annals of the 
Present United Colonies from their Settlement to the Peace of 
1768, 2 vols., London, 1780.—Cuarvevorx Dr (Rey. Francis X.), 
History and General Description of New France (Shea transla- 
tion, with notes), 6 vols., New York, 1866-1872.—CuarkeE (Richard 
L.), Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the 
United States, 3 vols., New York, 1888.—Clarksville, Picturesque, 
Past and Present, A History of the City of Hills, 1887.—Cuiayton 
(W. W.), History of Davidson County, Tennessee, Philadelphia, 
1880.—Coxss (Standford H.), The Rise of Religious Liberty in 
America, New York, 1902.—Coxuins (Lewis), History of Ken- 
tuckg (revised and brought down to 1874 by Richard H. Collins), 
2 vols., Covington, 1882.—Columbus, Diocese of, The History of 
Fifty Years, Columbus, 1918.—Currier (Rev. Charles W.), His- 
tory of the Religious Orders, New York, 1894. 

Davin (Rev. John B.), A Vindication of the Catholic Doctrine 
concerning the Use and Veneration of Images, etc.,. Louisville, 
1821.—Davis (George L.), The Day Star of American Freedom, 
New York, 1855.—Davis (James D.), History of the City of 
Memphis, Memphis, 1873.—Dr Courcy-Suea, History of the 
Catholic Church in the United States, New York, 1856.—Domin- 
ican Province, The English, London, 1921. 

Exson (Henry W.), History of the United States, 5 vols., New 
York, 1905.—Encyclopedia, The Catholic, various volumes.—Eth- 
nology, Bureau of American, Nineteenth Annual Report of, Wash- 
ington, 1897-1898. 

Frynn (Rev. Joseph M.), The Catholic Church in New Jersey, 
Morristown, 1904.—Forp (Henry A. and Kate), History of Cin- 
cinnati, 1881.—Fox (Sister Columba), The Life of the Right Rev. 
John Baptist Mary David, New York, 1925. 

GamBRALL (Rev. Theodore C.), Church Life in Colonial Mary- 
land, Baltimore, 1885; and Studies in the Civil, Social, and Eccle- 
siastical History of Early Maryland, New York, 1893.—GLEESON 
(Rev W.), History of the Church in California, 2 vols., San Fran- 
cisco, 1871.—Golden Bells in Convent Towers, The Story of 
Father Samuel [Mazzuchelli] and Saint Clara, Chicago, 1904.— 
GoopsPEED (Weston A.), History of Tennessee, Nashville, 1886.— 
Goss (Charles F.), The Queen City, 4 vols., Cincinnati and Chi- 
cago, 1912.—Goulding’s Catholic Churches in New York City 
(edited by John G. Shea), New York, 1878.—Granam (A. A.), 
History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, Chicago, 1883.— 
Guitpay (Rev. Peter), The English Catholic Refugees on the 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 579 


Continent, London, 1914; The National Pastorals of the Ameri- 
can Hierarchy, Washington, 1923; and Life and Times of John 
Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore, New York, 1922. 

Hammer (Rev. Bonaventure), Eduard Dominik Fenwick der 
Apostel von Ohio, Freiburg, 1890.—Hawks (Rev. Francis L.), 
A Narrative of Events Connected with the Rise and Progress of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, New York, 1839.—Hay- 
woop (John), The Civil and Political History of Tennessee from 
Its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796, Nashville, 1891.— 
Houck (Rev. George F.), A History of Catholicity in Northern 
Ohio and in the Diocese of Cleveland, editions of 1887, 1890, and 
1903 (last ed. 2 vols.), Cleveland—Howe (Henry), Historical 
Collections of Ohio, Cincinnati, 1848, and Columbus (3 vols.), 
1890-1891.—Howtertr (Rev. William J.), Historical Tribute to 
St. Thomas’ Seminary, Saint Louis, 1906; and Life of Rev. Charles 
Nerinckx, Techny, Illinois, 1915.—Hueues (Rev. Thomas), His- 
tory of the Society of Jesus in North America, 2 vols. of Text, 
and 2 vols. of Documents, 1907-1917. 

Inete (Edward), Captain Richard Ingle, the Maryland Pirate 
and Rebel (No. 19 of Fund Publications), Baltimore, 1884.— 
Irvine (Washington), Life of George Washington, 3 vols., New 
York, 1857. 

JarreTT (Rev. Bede), The English Dominicans, 1921.—Joun- 
son (Bradley T.), The Foundation of Maryland and the Origin 
of the Act Concerning Religion (No. 18 of Fund Publications), 
Baltimore, 1883. 

Kratine (J. M.), 4 History of the Yellow Fever in Memphis, 
Tennessee, Memphis, 1879; and History of the City of Memphis 
and Shelby County, Tennessee, 2 vols., Syracuse, 1888.—Kin- 
sELLA (Rev. Thomas H.), A Centenary of Catholicity in Kansas, 
Kansas City, 1921. 

Lamotr (Rev. John H.), History of the Archdiocese of Cin- 
cinnati, Cincinnati, 1921—bLyncu (Rev. J. S. M.), A Page of 
Church History in New York: Saint John’s, Utica, 1893. 

McCann (Sister Mary Agnes), The History of Mother Seton’s 
Daughters, the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, Ohio, 4 vols., New 
York, 1917-1923; and Archbishop Purcell and the Archdiocese of 
Cincinnati, Washington, 1918.—McGitt (Anna B.), The Sisters 
of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, New York, 1917—McManon 
(Rev. John V. L.), An Historical View of the Government of 
Maryland, Baltimore, 1831.—McSuerry (James), History of 
Maryland, Baltimore, 1849.—Mars (Rev. Camillus P.), Life of 
Rev. Charles Nerinckx, Cincinnati, 1880.—Maari (Rev. Joseph), 
The Catholic Church in the City and Diocese of Richmond, Rich- 
mond, 1906.—Martzourr (Clement L.), History of Perry County, 
Ohio, Columbus, 1902.—Mazzucue ui (Rev. Samuel C.), Memoirs 


580 THE (FATHER (OF ‘THE CHURCH IN| TENNESSEE 


Historical and Edifying of a Missionary Apostolic (a translation 
of Memorie Istoriche ed Edificanti,) Chicago, 1915.—MeE ine- 
McSweeney, The Story of the Mountain, 2 vols., Emmitsburg, 
Maryland, 1911—Muitter (Charles C.), History of Fairfield 
County, Ohio, Chicago—Mtnoaur (Anna C.), Loretto Annals of 
the Century, New York, 1912; and Pages from a Hundred Years 
of Dominican History, Louisville, 1922.—Montmorency-Laval De, 
Le Vénérable Francois, Quebec, 1908.—Moorer (John Trotwood), 
Tennessee, the Volunteer State, Vol. I, Chicago and Memphis, 
1923.—Moreau, Le Trés Rév. Pére Basile A. M@—Mortier (Rev. 
D. A.), Histoire des Maitres Généraux de VOrde des Freres 
Précheurs, Vol. VII, Paris, 1914. 

Nashville, Tennessee, History of (edited by J. Wooldridge), 
Nashville, 1890.—Neitt (Rev. Edward D.), Terra Mariae, Phil- 
adelphia, 1867; The Founders of Maryland, Albany, 1876; and 
Thomas Cornwallis and the Early Maryland Colonists, Boston, 
1879.—No.tu (Rev. Arthur H.), History of the [ Episcopalian | 
Church in the Diocese of Tennessee, New York, 1900. 

O’Daniet (Rev. Victor F.), Very Rev. Charles Hyacinth 
McKenna, 1917; The Friars Preacher, 1917; Right Rev Edward 
D. Fenwick, 1920; and An American Apostle (Very Rev. M. A. 
O’Brien), 1923.—O’Harr (John), Irish Pedigrees, or the Origin 
and Stem of the Irish Nation, Dublin, 1881.—O’SHeEa (John J.), 
The Two Kenricks, Most Rev. Francis P., Archbishop of Balti- 
more—Most Rev. Peter R., Archbishop of St. Louis, Philadelphia, 
1904. 

Parmer (Rev. Raymond), Life of Philip Thomas Howard, 
Cardinal of Norfolk, London, 1867.—Parkman (Louis L.), Chat- 
tanooga, Tennessee, Hamilton County, and Lookout Mountain, 
Chattanooga, 1876.—PuHrELAN (James), History of Tennessee, 
New York and Boston, 1889.—Purnam (Abigence W.), History 
of Middle Tennessee, Nashville, 1859. 

Ramsay (David), History of the United States from their First 
Settlement as English Colonies, 3 vols., Philadelphia, 1816—Ram- 
sey (J. G. M.), The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the 
Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia, 1860.—Ranpati (Emelius O.> 
and Ryan (Daniel J.), History of Ohio, 5 vols., New York, 1912. 
—Reruvuss (Francis X.), Biographical Cyclopedia of the Catholic 
Hierarchy in the United States, Milwaukee, 1898.—RicHarpson 
(Hester D.), Side-lights on Maryland History, 2 vols., Baltimore, 
1913.—RipeGeLtey (Helen W.), Historic Graves of Maryland and 
the District of Columbia, New York, 1908.—R6seEerr (Charles 
E.), Nashville and her trade for 1870, Nashville, 1870.—Ru.e 
(William), History of Knoxville, Tennessee, Chicago, 1900.—Rvus- 
sELL (Rev. William T.), Maryland the Land of Sanctuary, Balti- 
more, 1907. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 581 


Scuarr (J. Thomas), History of Maryland, 3 vols., Baltimore, 
1879.—Suea (John G.), History of the Catholic Missions among 
the Indian Tribes of the United States, New York, 1854; and A 
History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 4 vols. (sec- 
ond vol. Life of Archbishop Carroll), New York, 1886-1892.—Sit- 
ver (John A.), The Provincial Government of Maryland, Balti- 
more, 1905.—Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, History 
of the, Kansas City, 1898.—Smitu (C. E.), Religion under the 
Barons of Baltimore, Baltimore, 1899.—Smiru (Rev. John T.), 
A History of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York, 1885.— 
SmitH (Z. F.), The History of Kentucky, Louisville, 1892.— 
SpaLpine (Rev. John L.), Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, 
New York and Baltimore, 1873.—Spaxtpine (Rev. M. J.), Sketches 
of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky, Louisville, 1844; and 
Sketches of the Life, Times, and Character of the Right Rev. 
Benedict Joseph Flaget, Louisville, 1852.—Spanish Explorers in 
the Southern United States (Original Narratives of Early Amer- 
ican History), New York, 1907.—Sparxs (F. E.), Causes of the 
Maryland Revolution of 1689, Baltimore, 1896.—SrxEiner (Ber- 
nard C.), Life of Rev. Thomas Bray, Baltimore, 1901; and Mary- 
land during the English Civil Wars, and The Beginnings of Mary- 
land, both Baltimore, 1903.—Strevens (Rev. William B.), A 
History of Georgia, 2 vols.. New York, 1847.—Srtrocksrivee 
(Henry), The Archives of Maryland as Illustrating the Spirit of 
the Times of the Early Settlers, Baltimore, 1886.—Srreeter 
(Sebastian F.), Maryland Two Hundred Years Ago, 1852; and 
Papers Relating to the Early History of Maryland, Baltimore, 
1876.—SvutTor (J. H.), Past and Present of the City of Zanes- 
ville and Muskingum County, Ohio, Chicago, 1905. 

Tuomas (James W.), Chronicles of Maryland, Cumberland, 
1913.—TuHomas (Jane H.), Old Days in Nashville, Tennessee— 
Reminiscences, Nashville, 1897.—Treacy (Rev. William P.), Old 
Catholic Maryland and Its Early Jesuit Missionaries, 1889. 

Van Doninck (Benedictus), Het Voormalig Engelsch Klooster 
te Bornhem, Louvain, 1904.—Wesp (Ben. J.), The Centenary of 
Catholicity in Kentucky, Louisville, 1884.—WitHEeLm (Lewis W.), 
Sir George Calvert Baron of Baltimore, Baltimore 1884.—Winsor 
(Justin), Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols., New 
York and Boston, 1889. 


IV. PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS 


An account of the Progress of the Catholic Religion in the 
Western States of North America, etc., London, 1824.—Bapin 
(Rev. Stephen T.—Un Témoin Oculaire), Origine et Progres de 
la Mission du Kentucky, Paris, 1821.—Barr (Daniel), St. Mary’s 


582 THESFATHER OF sSTHE: CHURCH DIN: TENNESSEE 


Cathedral, Nashville, Tennessee, 1897.—Fuick (Laurence F.), 
The French Refugee Trappists in the United States, Philadelphia, 
1886.—GrauHam (Rey. Edward P.), A Sketch of St. John’s Parish 
(Canton, Ohio), 1924.— Korte Beschryving van de Zendelingschap 
van Pater Fenwick Bisschop van Cincinnati, in Ohio, Antwerp, 
1824.—Lorican (Rev. James T.), The Church of the Holy Ghost, 
Knoxville, Tennessee, 1909.—Patmer (Rev. Raymond), Obituary 
Notices of the Friar-Preachers, or Dominicans, of the English 
Province, 1884.—Saint Joseph’s Parish, Somerset, Ohio, The 
Centenary of, Somerset, 1918.—Tavurisano (Innocentius), Series 
Magistrorum Generalium Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Rome, 1916. 
—Vouz (Rev. John R.), A Century’s Record, 1905.—Wess (Ben. 
J.), Reminiscences of a Catholic Layman in Kentucky, Louisville, 
1867. 

American Catholic Historical Researches.—American Catholic 
Quarterly Review. American Historical Magazine.—Analecta 
Sacri Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, March, 1899, and January, 
1900.—Annales de la Propagation de la Foi.—Annales de L’ Archi- 
confrerie des Saints Noms, August-September, 1911.—Berichte der 
Leopoldinen-Stiftung im Kaiserthume Oesterrich.—Catholic His- 
torical Review.—Catholic Miscellany and Monthly Repository of 
Information.—Catholic Spectator—Catholic World.—The Col- 
legian (London).—The Columbian (Nashville).—Dominican Year 
Book, 1913.—Illinois Catholic Historical Review.—Maryland His- 
torical Review.—Merry England.—The Metropolitan.—Records 
of the American Catholic Historical SocietyRecords and Studies 
of the United States Catholic Historical Society.—St. Louis 
Catholic Historical Review.—St. Mary’s Sentinel, November, 1915. 
—Tennessee Historical Review.—United States Catholic Magazine. 


Vie ek ue: 


(Catholic) Adam—Catholic Advocate—Catholic Columbian— 
Catholic Guardian—Catholic Herald—Catholic Journal of the 
New South—Catholic Mirror—Catholic Telegraph—Freeman’s 
Journal—The Pilot—Shepherd of the Valley—The Record— 
United States Catholic Miscellany—The Truth Teller (mixed). 

(Secular) Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette; Cincinnati Daily 
Gazette; and the Western Spy.—Louisville Courier Journal.— 
Knozville Register; Whig; and Wilson’s Gazette—Memphis Ap- 
peal; Avalanche; and a few others of that city —WNashville Gazette; 
Whig; Banner; Banner and Whig; Republican; Republican Ban- 
ner; Patriot; Union; Union and American; Herald, etc. 


INDEX 


Since bibliographical references have an alphabetical arrange- 


ment in the Bibliography, they are not repeated here. 


Abell, Rev. Robert A., 118 n., 132 n., 
novice, 114-117; education, 159 n.; 
in Tenn., 295-306 

Achilli, Giovanni, apostate priest, 
458. 

Ackerman, Father Francis, O.P., 
visit of Miles to, 353 

Adams, Richard, 45 

Ahern, John and Helen, 497 

Pike ei heves LON AE.) On). tod. 
463 n 

Aiken, Mary and Robert, conver- 
sion, 326-327, 376n.; letter of 
Miles to, 386-388; confirmation, 


396 
Aiken, Col. Matthew, 324, 327 n. 
Alemany, Most Rev. Joseph S., 
aE AAT 00s (it. LADOLS in) O/ Os 


380, 409, 410, 418, 427; at ordina- 
tion, 390; in Cuba, 399; account 
by, 399-401; in Memphis, 420n.; 
made bishop of Monterey, 440- 
441; sketch of life, 441 n.; superior 
of Nashville seminary, 510 

Alexian Brothers, 142n. 

Alton, Ill., diocese, 465 n. 

Anderson, Rev. Augustine P., O. P., 
made subdeacon, 327; ordination, 
348 

Angier, Rev. Robert A., O.P., 67, 
1o2 Belo nN. sin Md. 409 sat7 St. 
Rose’s, 84; missionary labors, 92, 
101, 102, 141, 142n.; scholarship, 
101, 102 

Anne Arundel 
family in, 7, 9 


Co., Md., Miles 


583 


Archer, Bridget, 504 


Armstrong, Cornelius and Elisa 
(Gillin), 493 
Armstrong, Patrick and Martha 


(Woods), 481 

Arthur family, at Bolivar, 500 

Ashport, Tenn., plan for church in, 
333-335 

Assumption, see Fort Assumption 

Athens, Tenn,, 340; Miles at, 323; 
early Catholics, 490 

Attakapas, mission, 55n. 

Aud, Father Athanasius A., aid 
offered Miles, 328 

Aud, Thomas, 45 

Aud, Zachariah, 45 

Augustinians, in Philadelphia, 74 n., 
83 n. 

Avalon, Calvert’s colony, 2n. 

Axtel, Ky., 64 


Badin, Rev. Stephen T., cited, 36-37, 
60n., 153; at. consecration \ of 
Miles, 257; in Ky., 46, 49, 54, 
61-63, 65, 107; in Tenn., 283-293, 
296 ne S00in} 332 

Badjer family, 486 

Baltimore, Lord, see Calvert 

Baker, , at St. Thomas’, 153 

Baltimore, Md., provincial council, 
343, 349, 351-352, 385, 386, 388-390, 
410, 411-412, 434, 440-442; first 
plenary council, 454-455 

Baltimore Co., Md., Miles family 
in, 7 

Bamber, Sister Margaret, 452n. 





584 INDEX 


Baptiste, John and Judith, 481 

Barbour, James P., alumnus of St. 
Thomas’, 157; address, 529 

Bardstown, Ky., Cathedral, 36; ex- 
tent of diocese, 292 

Barr, Daniel, 480 

Barres, John, 486 

Barriére, Rev. Michael 
labors, 54-55 

Barron, Rev. Edward, letter of, 330; 
account of, 331 n. 

Barry, Arthur, 500 

Barry, Daniel, 500 


Bernard, 


Barry, Valentine D. and Mary 
(Adams), 500 

Barry, William, 500 

Bates, WJames 7b; at) St. Thomas, 
Mec Reds) 


Baxter, John, 489 

Bayer, Rev. Benedict, C.SS.R., and 
Miles, 349-350 

Bean, Russell, 274 n. 

Bean, William, 274n. 

Beckwith, Mary, wife 
Miles, 8 

Begly, John and Dolly (Hennessy), 
490 

Bennet, 
land, 6 

Benzer, George and Louisa (Kut- 
man), 481 

Bibliography, 576-582 

Biemans, Rev. Joseph L., missionary 
labors, 473, 490, 544; sketch of 
life, 473n., 564; cited, 494n. 

Blackloc, Ann, wife of Nicholas 
Miles, 19-20 

Blackloc, Nicholas, 20 n. 

Blackloc, Thomas, 20n. 

Blackloc family, 20 n. 

Blanc, Rt. Rev. Anthony, 132n.; 
aid to Miles, 324-326, 337; at 
Baltimore council, 352n. 

Blanc, Rev. Charles, at consecration 
of Miles, 257 

Blieck, Rev. John de, 


of John 


Richard, action in Mary- 


S.J., address 


at St. Catherine’s, 529 
Blount, Gov. William, 284, 285 
Bodkin, Rev. Francis, O.P., letter 

from, 29 
Bohen, Michael and Catherine, 497 
Boisleduc, James, at St. Thomas’, 

154 
Bokel, Rev. John A., O. P., 106n.; 

cited, 438 n.; hore 459, 466, 474; 

sketch of hie. 474 n. 

Bolen, Thomas and Mary, 498 
Bolivar, Tenn., early Catholics, 500 
Bonfils, Mary, 481 

Boone, Daniel, in Kentucky, 26 
Boone, sat» St. Thontas#erss 
Boone, Henry, 71, 112 n. 

Bordley, Patrick R. and Henrietta, 

502 
Bornheim, college at, 66, 67 
Boswith, William, 509 
Bouchard, Gustave, 486, 516 
Bowling, Rev. C. D., O.P., 246 
Bowser, James J., 492 
Boyle, Cornelius and 

(Allen), 481 
Boyle, Patrick and Ellen, 497 
Boyle, Thomas and Mary, 497 
Bradley, Nicholas, 487 
Bradshaw, William, 503 
Braeckman, Rev. Pius, 

of Miles to, 353 
Brannan, Catherine, 481 
Brassac, Rev. Hercules, 





Tabitha 


OPP air sif 


353 n. 


Brazil, Martin and Anastasia, 481 
Breene, John and Jane (Burke), 
494 


Brenahan, Daniel, 493 

Brennan, Michael, 487 

Brewer, Thomas, 45 

Broderick, John, 488 

Brown, Gov. Aaron V., 415 

Brown, Blanche (Mrs. Matthew 
Aiken), 327 n. 

Brown, Rev. Henry V., ordination, 
439; cited 443, 546-547; in Chat- 
tanooga, 456, 457; missionary 


INDEX 585 


labors, 458, 459, 463, 474, 491, 
492, 496, 497, 499; proposed as 
Bishop, 463-464; churches erected, 
472, 499, 531, 543-544; paintings, 
484; at St. Rose’s, 529; and co- 
adjutor, 537; diocesan counsellor, 
553; at Miles’ funeral, 557; sketch 
of, 563-564 

Browne, Rt. Rev. George J., 416n.; 
death, 417 n. 

Browne, William H., cited, 4 

Brownlow, William G., 495 

Brunner, Sister Joanna, 451 

Bruté, Rt. Rev. Simon G., and con- 
secration of Miles, 256, 257 

Buckman, Rev. Thomas D., O.P., 
minor orders, 406-407 

Buddeke, Mary (Ratterman), 480 

Bullock, patiSt) Ghomas 7153 

Bullock, Rev. James V., O. P., 156; 
246 

Burchiel, Abraham, 487 

Burke, John and Bridget (O’Con- 
nor), 503 

Burke, John and Margaret (Po- 
land), 503 

Burke, Robert, 503 

Burns, Dina, 481 

Burns, Hugh, 480 

Burns, James, 480 

Burns, Michael, 413, 480, 482 

Burns, Patrick, Nashville, 480 

Burns, Patrick, Humphreys Co., 487 

Burns, William, 480 

Busey, Paul, 20n. 

Byrne, Dorothy, 486 

Byrne, John, 485 

Byrne, Rev. Stephen, O.P., cited, 
71n., 93n., 249n.; at Memphis, 
548; sketch of, 567-568 

Byrne, Rev. William, 132n.; foun- 
der of St. Mary’s College, Ky., 
280; in Tenn., 310 

Byrnes Colony, 485 





Caiwood, Benjamin, 20n. 


Calfield, Catherine, 502 





Calhoun, eatin euomas, 
153 

Calhoun, Tenn., Miles at, 319 

Callaghan, John and_ Bridget 


(Wrenn), 494 

Callaghan, Philip, 479, 482, 508 

Calvert, Benedict, fourth Lord Bal- 
timore, apostasy of, 6 

Calvert, Cecilius, second Lord Bal- 
timore, 2, 6 

Calvert, Charles, third Lord Balti- 
more, Maryland under, 6 

Calvert, Charles, fifth Lord Balti- 
more, charter restored, 6 

Calvert, George, first Lord Balti- 
more, 2 

Calvert, Gov. Leonard, 3 

Calvert Co., Md., Miles family in, 
7D 

Campbell, Rev. Allan, D., 301 

Campbell, Patrick, letter of, 287, 
289 n. 


Campbell, R. C., proprietor of 
Ashport, 335 

Campbell, Maj. William, 289 n.- 
290 n. 


Campbell’s Hill, church on, 303 

Cappellari, Cardinal, 203 

Carlin, Daniel, of N. C., 278 

Garlin, Thomas, of Ni -C., 278 

Carney, Patrick and Mary (Daley), 
494 

Carney, Sister Serena, 452 n. 

Carrondelet, Francis Baron de, 273 

Gare , 478 

Carr, Rev. Matthew, O.S.A., 74n., 
83 n. 

Carryoarahy:9 

Carr, Thomas B., 502 

Carroby, Timothy, 498 

Carroll, Jane (Manea), 479 

Carroll, Most Rev. John, 31, 66n., 
504; vicar apostolic, 5153, first 
bishop of the United States, 54-56; 
and the Ky. missions, 60-65; and 





586 INDEX 


establishment of Dominicans, 76- 
78; appointment, 269 

Carroll, Mary, 479 

Carroll, Thomas, 493 

Carroll, Father Wlliam, at Miles’ 
funeral, 557 

Carter, Rev. Charles H. J., at coun- 
cil, 412 n.; vicar general of Phila. 
delphia, 552 

Carter, Landon, Tenn. lands, 284 

Cartwright Creek’s Settlement, 35, 
61n., 63 

Casey, Thomas and Mary (Shea: 
han), 493 

Catholics, persecution of, 23 

Catoir, Peter and Collette, 486 

Cellini, Rev. Francis, 380 n. 

Chabrat, Rt. Rev. G. I, 132n., 343, 
JoZi ser ordination, © LUG) 2e109m.. 
made coadjutor, 239-240; bishop- 
ric of Tenn. proposed by, 249-250, 
254; and pastor of Nashville, 312, 
313; and St. Mary’s College, 416; 
illness, 420-421 

Champion, James 
(Harrison), 489 

Chanche, Rt. Rev. John J., letter 
from, 414 

Charitysy Sistersotjwin® Ky 238; 
239 nJ:) Nazareth, Ky.) 377 ;)\in 
Tenn., 377-379, 423; academy, 405; 
hospital and orphanage, 430; in 
Nashville, 515, 516, 533 

Charles Co., Md., Miles family in, 
7, 13, 17, 18; emigration to Ky., 
30-35 

Charleston, S. C., diocese of, 306- 
307 

Chattanooga, first priest, 372n.; 
state of Church in, 456; early 
Catholics, 496-498; school, 517; 
church built, 531 

Cheatham, Dr. William A., 
dence, 452 

Cherokees, 267, 268 

Chicago, diocese established, 388 


and Eleanor 


resi- 


Chickasaws, 268 

Childress, Elizabeth, 483 

Chisca, Indian village, 263-264 

Choctaws, 267 

Cincinnati, dedication of cathedral, 
406-407; made archbishopric, 
434n.; provincial council, 536 

Cipoletti, Most Rev. Thomas, O. P., 
Superior General, 245, 248-249, 


253 
Claiborne, William, dispute with 
Calvert, 5, 6 


Clancy, Rev. William, labors, 338- 
339, 361, 502; in Nashville, 348; 
transfer, 366 

Clark, “at St. Phomay eae 

Clark, Clement, 45 

Clark, Gen. George Rogers, 28 

Clark, Joseph, 45 

Clark, Sister Magdalen, 446 

Clark, Richard, 45 

Clark, Rev. W. E., .at consecration 
of Miles, 257 

Clarkson, Rev. James H., O. P., and 
choice of provincial, 246; in 
Memphis, 427; labors and death, 
435-438 

Clarkson, Rev. Sydney A., O.P., 
cited, 106 n., 438n.; made sub- 
deacon, 401; made deacon, 406; 
proposed as coadjutor, 536 

Clarksville, Tenn., church erected, 
395; church dedicated, 402; early 
Catholics, 486-487 








Clay, » at Stl, Thomas yias 
Clay, Green, son of Gen. Green 
Glay155 


Clay, General Green, 155 

Claybrook, John S., 501, 504 

Cleary, James, 497 

Cleary, Rev. John R., O.P., mis- 
sionary labors, 459, 466, 474-475; 
death, 475-476; sketch of life, 
475 n. 

Cleary, Mary, 497 

Clements, Austin, 45 


INDEX 587 


Clifford, Patrick and Elisa (Cobel), 
493 

Clifford, Thomas and Pauline (Ca- 
hill), 493 

Coe, Hon. L. H., residence, 446 

Coffey, Francis and Bridget (Fo- 
ley), 503 

Coleman, David, 497 

Colleges, early Catholic, system of 
instruction, 117, 119-120 

Collet, Francis W., and wife, 482 

Collins, Jeremiah and Sarah (Hem- 
bree), 493 

Collins, Patrick and Jane (Lee), 
493 

Collins family, at Bolivar, 500 

Collings, Zebulon, 41 

Cologne, letter to archbishop of, 
they 

Colonies, American, Church in, 23 

Columbia, Tenn., 340; Father Stokes 
at, 331-332 

Conaghan, John 
(Clancy), 503 

Conaghan, Mary, 503 

Concanen, Right Rev. Richard L., 
O.P., 95; and the establishment 
of Dominicans, 67-68, 68 n., 76-86; 
legacy, .1115,130 

Conlan, Sister Monica, 447 n. 

Conley, Thomas, 488 

Connolly, Peter, and wife, 504 

Connor, John and Margaret, 493 

Connor, Michael, 493 

Connor, Patrick and 
(Body), 493 

Connor, Peter, 487 

Connor, William, proprietor of Ash- 
port, 333-334, 335 

Connor and McAlister, merchants, 
326 

Consalvi, Cardinal, 180-181 

Conwell, Rt. Rev. Henry, 352n. 

Coode, John, insurrection of, 12 

Coomes, Rev. Charles, 132 n. 

Coomes, Francis, 45 


and Margaret 


Rachael 


Coomes, Richard, 45 

Coomes, William and wife, 29 

Cooper, William, artist, 427 

Copely, Gov. Lionel, 12 

Coppola, Archbishop Dominic, 78 n. 

Cosgreve (Cosgrove), Rev. James, 
in Nashville, 307, 308, 309, 355 

Costigan, Thomas, 504 

Cotter, James and Bridget (Mc- 
Carthy), 498 

Cotter, Patrick and Elizabeth 
(Vane), Knoxville, 493 

Cotter, Patrick and Elizabeth, Chat- 
tanooga, 498 

Coughlin, James and Honora, 486 

Councils, first plenary, 454-455; 
provincial, see Baltimore, Cincin- 
nati, St. Louis 

Cox’s Creek Settlement, see Fair- 
field 

Cretin, Bishop, at provincial council, 
465 

Crimmins, Mrs. Honora (Cotter), 
498 

Crimmins, Nora, 478n., 498 n. 

Crowley, Daniel and Soethe, 497 

Crughan, ——, at St. Thomas’, 153 

Cubero, Rev. Francis, O. P., labors, 
379, 380, 466; Sisters escorted by, 
446; sketch of life, 466n. 

Cullen, Rev. Paul, 250 n. 

Cumberland River, bridge, 294-295 

Curley, Peter, 487 

Curry, Catherine, 493 

Curry, Elizabeth, 493 

Curtain, James and Catherine, 497 

Curtis family, 488 


Dady, John and Elizabeth, 489 

Daily, Patrick and Martha (Win- 
sight), 490 

Daley, John and Eugenia (Rorke), 
493 

Dalmazzo, William J. 49n. 

Daly, Rev. James V., O.P., mis- 
sionary labors, 466; at Memphis, 


588 


529; at dedication, 533; transfer, 
548; sketch of, 549n. 

Daly, Mary, 498 

Damiani, Father Innocent, 
478 n. 

Dane, John and Mary (Sanders), 
481 

Danville, Ky., Dominicans at, 159 n. 

D’Arco, Rev. Januarius, M., O. P., 
in Nashville, 548; at dedication, 


OP ses 


551; diocesan counsellor, 553; 
Miles’ funeral, 557; sketch of, 
569 


Dardis, James, early Catholic in 
Tenn., 285, 289, 290, 332, 489, 491 

Dardis, Thomas, 289, 289n., 491 

Dargan, Timothy and Mary (Mc- 
Carthy), 494 

Daugherty, 

Davern, Mrs., 504 

David, Rt. Rev. John B., 49, 132 n.; 
rector of seminary, 159; conse- 
cration, 161-162; resignation, 239- 
240; and consecration of Miles, 
Zoo aon 

Davis, Sister Ellen, 451 

Davis, Garrett, 157 

Davis, Jefferson, at St. 
College, 147-153 

Davis, Rudolph 
(Armstrong), 503 

Deady, Helen, 497 

De Blieck, see Blieck 

Delaune, Father, at St. Mary’s Col- 
lege, 416 

De Montbrun, Timothy, story of, 
281-283, 286, 290, 300 

Demoville, Mrs. Felix, 483 

Dempsey, Thomas, 488 

De Pestre, see Pestre 

Deparcq, Father, 312 

Deppen, Rev. Louis G., 261 n. 

Derigaud, Rev. James, 132n.; or- 
dination, 139 n. 

Desha, Clarissa (Rogan), 
484 


» 45 





Thomas’ 


and Elizabeth 


280 n., 


INDEX 


De Soto, Hernando, expedition, 263- 
265 

De Soto, Rev. Louis, O. P., 264 

Després, Joseph and Louisa (Mitch- 
el), 481 

Devine, Timothy and Bridget (Sul- 
livan), 494 

Devitt, Rev. Edward I., S.J., 110 n.- 
IT in. l42ine 

Dillon, Christopher, 493 

Dillon, Margaret, 497 

Dittoe, Jacob, 111 n., 124n. 

Doheny, Michael and Bridget, 497 

Dolan, Bernard D. and Bridget, 493 

Dolan, Maurice and Margaret 
(Lawne), 494 

Dominican Sisters, in Ky., 238-239; 
and Miles, 377; in Tenn., 445-447 ; 
in Memphis, 548; see also St. 
Catherine’s; individuals by name 

Dominicans, of Md., 1; in Ky., 62- 
66, 79-90; English, 66; establish- 
ment in U. S., 67-74, 75; cere- 
mony of investiture, 86-90; cere- 
mony of profession, 97-99; aims 
and studies, 100; wearing of ton- 
sure, 123, 125; in early Ten., 264; 
assume charge of Memphis, 420; 
see also St. Joseph’s; St. Rose’s; 
and individuals by name 

Donaghue, Patrick and Catherine 
(Sullivan), 494 

Donaghue, Patrick and Honora 
(Connell), 494 

Donohue family, 486 

Donovan, Jeremiah and Mary (Ly- 
ning), 481 

Dorchester Co., Md., Miles family 
in, 7 

Dorly, Collum, 481 

Dorney, family, 488 

Dorrity, William, 482 

Douay, Father Anastasius, O.S.F., 
with La Salle, 265 

Dougherty, Clarksville, 486 

Dougherty, John, 487 


INDEX 


Dougherty, John R., 502 

Dougherty, Mrs. Mary (Kinney), 
508 n. 

Dougherty, Patrick, 487 

Dougherty, William, 480, 481, 508 

Dowd, Patrick and _ Elizabeth 
(Brotherton), 493 

Driscoll, John and Mary, 497 

Drury, Hilary, 45 

Drury, Ignatius, 45 

Duane, Patrick —J. 
(Starms), 494 


and Sarah 


Dubois, Rt. Rev. John, 61 n., 352 a 


Duffy, Francis, 484 

Duffy, John, 484 

Duffy, Michael, 484 

Duffy, Nancy, 278 

Duffy, Patrick, 484 

Duggan, Rt. Rev. James, consecra- 
tion, 528; at consecration, 545, 549 

Dunlevy, John and Sarah, 486 

Dunn, Rev. John, aid offered by, 
330 

Dunn, Mrs. Mary, cited, 527 

Dupontavice, Rev. Hippolytus, at 
consecration, 432 

Durbin, Very Rev. Elisha J., at St. 
Thomas’, 153; in Louisville, 156; 
education, 159n.; at consecration 
of Miles, 257; in Tenn., 311-314, 
340, 368; and induction of Miles, 
315-322, 328; at dedication, 425; 
at Ross’ Landing, 496 

Duval, watwoten Dhnomasy4153 

Dwyer, John, and family, 484 

Dwyer, Joseph and family, 479 





Easley, Hugh and Catherine, 497 

Easley, Hugh and Margaret, 497 

Easley, Patrick, 498 

Eccleston, Most Rev. Samuel, let- 
ters to, 158n., 330, 384; at Balti- 
more council, 351, 352n.; dedica- 
tion by, 407; and Spalding, 431; 
and bishopric of Monterey, 440 

Edelen, Rev. James V., O. P., cited, 


589 


106 n., 438 n.; made subdeacon, 406 

Edgefield, Tenn., dedication of 
church.) 531-532 

Egan, Rev. Constantine L., O.P., 
106 n. 

Egan, Rt. Rev. Michael, O.S.F.,, 
first bishop of Philadelphia, 61 

Elder, Rev. George A., 132n. 

Elder, Thomas, 45 

Elder, Rt. Rev. William H., at dedi- 
cation, 533-534 

Elkhorn Creek, settlement, 35 

Ellen, Sister, death, 525 

Elliot, Rev. James, in Tenn., 311 

England, Rt. Rev. John, cited, 309, 
Solr oOo ati baltimore, council: 
352n.; successor, 389 

England, condition of Church in, 23 


English, William and Mary 
(Dunn), 503 
Erhart, Jerome and _ Henrietta 


(Wetzell), 494 

Etschmann, Rev. Edmund, O.S.F., 
labors in Tenn., 438-439 

Evans, Capt. William, 290 n. 

Evremond, Rev. Francis. X., S. J., 
348 ; at consecration of Miles, 257; 
mission by, 366-367 

Ewing, Gen. Hugh, genealogy by, 
111 n. 

Ewing, Rev. Hugh, cited, 111 n. 


Facts, 281n., 497 

Fahey, Anna, 498 

Fairfield Settlement, 35, 40, 44, 57 

Farley, Ann, 489 

Farley, Luke, 488 

Farrell, James, 480 

Farrell, Margaret (Coyle), 480 

Farrell, Patrick, 503 

Farrell, Patrick and Margaret, 497 

Farrell, Thomas, 480, 482 

Farrell, Thomas and Elizabeth, 494 

Fawkes, Mrs. Ellen (Maguire), 
498 n. 

Fayetteville, Tenn., 340; Miles at, 


590 INDEX 


319; Father Stokes at, 331, 332; 
early Catholics, 489 

Feehan, Rt. Rev. Patrick A., 544 n. 

Fennelly, Rev. William, in Nash- 
ville, 394 

Fenwick, Rt. Rev. Benedict, at Bal- 
timore, council, 352 n. 

Fenwick, Rt. Rev. Edward D., 
132 n., 143; birth, 1, 66; life and 
labors, 65-85; education, 66; or- 
dination, 67; and establishmént 
of Dominicans, 67-70, 75-80, 91; 
Cited, (oleae m2 Le) in! ON ee 
95-96; (‘visits Md., 109; “at” St. 
Thomas’, 113-115 

Fenwick, Rev. John C., O.P., la- 
bors, 84n. 

Fenwick, Joseph, 61 n. 

Ferriter, John and Mary, 493 

Finn, Andrew, contractor, 334-335 

Finn, Frances, 488 

Finn, John, 488 

Finn, Lawrence and_ Elizabeth 
(Clay Duval), 488 

Fisher family, 485 

Fitzgerald, John and Anna (Con- 


nell), 494 

Fitzgerald, William and Mary 
(Flemming), 493 

Fitzgibbon, John and Margaret, 


497 

Fitzgibbon, Mary E., 497 

Fitzpatrick, early families in Ky., 
27 

Fitzpatrick, Rt. Rev. John B., pro- 
posed for coadjutor, 389 

Fitzpatrick, Sister Mary 
447 n., 468 n. 

Fitzpatrick, Sister Vincentia, 446 

Fitzsimmons, Ann, 481 

Fitzsimmons, Eleanor, 481 

Flaget, Rt. Rev. Benedict J., 132 n.; 
ordinations by, 107-110, 138; and 
wearing of tonsure, 125; cited, 
138, 159, 236-239, 292, 296, 305; 
and Miles, 239-240, 254, 255; visit 


Pius, 


to Nashville, 299-302; at Balti- 
more council, 352n.; title to pro- 


perty, 403; illness, 420; and 
Louisville coadjutor, 431-432 
Flannagan, John and Mary 


(Hughes), 481 

Flowers, Mrs., 480 

Floyd, Jeanne, 280, 484 

Fogarty, Terrence and Mary (Har- 
rison), 490 

Foley, Michael, 492 

Forbin-Janson, Bishop Charles A. 
de, at Baltimore, 351-352 

Forest, Dr. Richard, 158 n. 

Fort Assumption, 265, 267, 269, 
270 n., 293 

Fort Pickering, Tenn., 
church, 363, 371, 375 n. 

Fort Prud’homme, 265, 267 

Fort San Ferdinando, 269-270 

Fossick, Thomas L., 491, 492 n., 495 

Foster, Anthony, property for 
church, 301, 303, 304, 403, 405 n. 

Foster, Robert, 303 n. 

Fournier, Rev. Michael J., labors, 
57-59; death, 59 

Fowler, John W., 502 

Foy, Hugh, 488 

Foy, Hugh and Mary (Cannon), 
486 

Foy, Sister. Rose, O.S. D., 491n: 

Franciscans, community proposed 
for Scott Co., Ky., 61; early con- 
vent, 73; in Nashville diocese, 
438 

Franklin, Charles E., 525 

Franklin, State of, 272 

Franklin, Tenn., 340; Miles at, 320; 
Father Stokes at, 331-332; early 
Catholids, 488-489; Know-noth- 
ingism in, 524 

Franzoni, Cardinal, 250n., 253 

Frenaye, Mark, letter to, 443 

French, Charles and Frances, 481 

French and Indian War, 269 

Froman’s Creek, 41 


proposed 


INDEX 591 


Gaddi, Most Rev. Pius J., O. P., 67, 
75-84, 122 
Gaffney, Michael and wife, 503 





Gallagher, , 480 
Gallagher, Rt. Rev. Nicholas A., 
470 n. 


Gallagher, Susanna, 480 

Gallagher family, 488 

Gallatin, Tenn., 340; visit of priest, 
312; Miles at, 321; first Catholics, 
484-485 

Gallegos, Father John de, O. P., 264 

Gallitzin, Father Demetrius, 516 

Galvin, James, 484 

Gangloff, Rev. Anthony R., O.P., 
minor orders, 406; missionary la- 
bors, 466, 474, 534; sketch of, 564, 
565 

Ganilh, Rev. Anthony, 132n., 139 n., 

Gannon, Thomas and Elizabeth, 489 

Gardiner, Christina (Mrs. Thomas 
Miles), 49 

Gardiner, Clement, 41, 45; chapel in 
house of, 40, 47 

Gardiner, Mother Frances, 450n., 
452 n. 

Gardiner, Joseph, 45, 73 n. 

Garvin, John and Emily (Frensly), 
481 

Garvin, Patrick and Ellen (Dris- 
coll), 498 

Gary, Michael, 498 

Gazzo, Rev. Eugene, 468n., 539n. 

Georgetown College, 74n., 110n., 
327 

Germam, Jefferson and Dellalion 
(Wright), 494 

Gerraghty family, 488 . 

Gibbons, Michael and Margaret, 497 

Gibson, Sister Pauline, 452 

Gilgannon, Patrick, 488 

Gillespie, , 478 

Gilliam, Margaret, 480 n. 

Glassner, John, 487 

Gleason, Rev. P. J., 517 n. 

Glynn, Thomas, 488 





Glynn, William, 488 

Golden, Patrick, 504 

Gough, ati ote bhoniase: 153 

Gough, Ignatius, 286, 287 

Grace, Margaret, 502 

Grace, Most Rev. Thomas L., O. P., 
memorial, 357, 358 n.; labors, 417, 
418, 427, 459, 466, 474; proposed 
as bishop, 440; school, 517n.; 
church built, 531; at dedication, 
200 mana coadjutor. 90734 at) pros 
vincial council, 542; appointed 
bishop, 548; consecration of, 549- 
550, sketch of, 550 n. 

Grace family, at Bolivar, 500 

Gracewood Farm, 447 

Grady, David, 491-492 

Grady, Father Francis D., 478 n. 

Graham, Maj. Daniel, residence, 397, 
398 

Gravier, Rev. James, S. J., 26 

Gregory, XVI, 250, 253-254 

Green, James and Mary (Gorman), 
503 

Greenville, treaty of, 28 

Griffin, John and Martha (Watter-. 
son), 481 

Griffin, Col. Joseph J., 498 

Griffin, Patrick and Jane (Shea. 
han), 493 

Griter, Balthasar and Martha, 486 

Griter, Margaret, 486 

Grundy, Felix, 301, 438 

Guillet, Rev. Urban, 61, 70 

Gwynn, Thomas, 59, 70, 71 n.; chapel 
in house of, 41, 47 





Hagan, ateote. Holds malod 

Hagan, Clement, 49 

Hagan, Raphael, 45 

Hagerty, Margaret, 497 

Hailandiére, Rt. Rev. Celestine de 
la, at Baltimore council, 352n. 

Haley, Mary, 504 

Haloran, Michael and Anna (Ody), 
493 





592 


Halpin, Patrick, 487 

Hamilton, Mrs. Catherine, 
505 n. 

Hamilton, George, 61 n. 

Hamilton, Leonard, 32 n. 

Hamilton, Mrs. Lucy (Edelen), 
95 n. 

Hamilton, William T., alumnus of 
St. Lnomasqe ins 

Hammond, Nicholas, will of. 9 

Hannon, John, 497 

Hardin’s Creek Settlement, 35 

Harford Co., Md., Miles family in, 
1G} 

Harnett, William, 498 

Harper, Sister Lucy, 446 

Harrington, Michael, 459, 498, 499 

Harringham, Thomas and Elizabeth 
(Body), 493-494 

Harrison family, 489 

Harrodsburg, settlement, 65 

Hart, Dr. George, 29 

Hartford, Conn., diocese established, 
388 

Hartsville, Tenn., 312, 340 

Harvey, Nicholas, 8 

Hawkins Co., Tenn., early Catho- 
lics, 284 

Hayes, , 478 

Hayes, William, 492 

Hazeltine (or Haseltine), Rev. Jo- 
seph, at consecration of Miuiles, 
257; deed to, 451; and Sisters of 
Charity, 377-378 

Heim, Rev. Ambrose J., account of, 
340 

Henderson, Andrew, 447 n. 

Henderson, Col. Richard, 36n. 

Henderson, W. A., cited, 277 n. 

Henni, Rt. Rev. John M., consecra- 
tion, 393; at provincial council, 
465; at consecration, 550 

Henry, Mrs., 289 

Henry VIII, persecution under, 2 

Herity, Patrick, 488 

Herlini, , Chattanooga, 498 


502 n., 








INDEX 


Herman, John, 480 

Hickman and Austin, contractors, 
505 

Hickson, James, 498 n. 

Hickson, Robert, 498 n. 

Higdon, Thomas, 45 

Ei , at Stclhomas aia 

Hill, Rev. John’ A., O“P), 93 teeta, 
133; letter to, 122-132; sketch of, 
126n.; characteristics, 133 n. 

Hill family, 488 

Hinds, Howell, at St. Thomas’ Col- 
lege, 149-150 

Hinds, Maj. Thomas, 149-150 

Hite, , at St. Thomas’, 153 

Hogan, Daniel, 498 

Hogan, Thomas 
(McCabe), 503 

Hogan, Thomas and Margaret, 493 

Holy Cross, first Catholic church in 
Ky., 53, 63 

Holy Cross College, Bornheim, Bel- 
gium, 66, 146 

Holy Name of Mary, Calvary, 57, 
63 

Holy Rosary Cathedral, Nashville, 
dedication, 337; mission, 366-367 ; 
converted into hospital, 430 

Holy Trinity, Somerset, Ohio, Miles 
aeoge 

Hopkins, 
I boys) 

Horan, James and Mary (O’Brien), 
493 

Horne, Catherine, daughter of Su: 
sanna Miles, 11 

Horne, Edward, 11 

Hoste, Rev. Louis, at ordinations, 
372, 390; labors, 377, 380, 396, 409, 
438, 458, 470-471, 482; superior of 
Nashville seminary, 510; school 
established, 516-517; and coad- 
jutor, 537: at dedication,;) S51" 
diocesan counsellor, 549; sketch 
of, 560 

Howard, Rev. William, minor or- 








and Catherine 





, at) Ste Thomass 


INDEX 


ders, 371; ordination, 390, 394, 
395, 511; transfer, 411; missionary 
labors, 439, 489-490 

Hughes, James, 501° 

Hughes, Rt. Rev. John, in Europe, 
351, 352n.; and Nashville priests, 
411; at council, 412; invitation 
from, 414; at dedication, 455 

Hughes, John, 488 

Hughes, Patrick, 498 n. 

Humphreys Co., Tenn., first Catho- 
lics, 487-488 

Hussey, Martin 
(Dwyer), 498 

Hutton, Brother William P., O. P., 
251 i. 

Hynes, Alfred, 150 

Hynes, Michael, Saundersville, 486 

Hynes family, 486 

Hyronemus, Francis A., and wife, 
481-482 

Hyronemus, William H., 304 


and Catherine 


Immaculate Conception, Clarksville, 
dedicated, 402 

Immaculate Conception, 
Tunnel, 459 

Immaculate Conception, Knoxville, 
dedicated, 473 

Indians, in Tenn., 267-269 

Ingle, Richard, insurrection of, 6 

Ireland, Most Rev. John, 550 n. 

Ireland, immigrants from, 7; con- 
dition of Church in,: 23 

Irwin, Henry and William, contrac- 
tors, 505 

Irwin, William and Mary (Quin- 
lan), 503 


Gallatin 


Jackson, Gen. Andrew, visit to, 149; 
at Catholic service, 308; attitude 
towards Catholics, 404 n. 

Jackson, Tenn., Father Stokes at, 
334; church at, 340, 459; early 
Catholics, 501 

Jackson Mound, 264 


39 


593 


Jacquet, Rev. John M., at Chat- 
tanooga, 372 n., 496, 497, 498-499 ; 
in Nashville, 409; labors, 438, 457, 
458, 459, 462, 468-469, 482; sketch 

of, 469n.; superior of Nashville 
seminary, 510 

Jane Frances, Sister, death, 525 

Janes, wate ot... nomas alld 

Jarboe, Rev. Joseph T., O.P., edu- 
cuuotwel Ole labors, 23/ine and 
choice of provincial, 246; and in- 
duction of Miles, 316-319; cited, 
360 n.; conversion by, 439; at dedi- 
cation, 533; at provincial council, 
543; proposed as bishop, 545n. 

Jarboe, Richard, 45 

Jenkins, George and Lydia (Ar- 
mour), 501 

Jesuits, in Md., 15; early communi- 
ties, 74n.; in America, 83n.; pro- 
fession, 97n.; suppression, 269; 
in charge of St. Mary’s College, 
Ky., 310 

Johnson, Judge, church land given 
by, 429 

Joliet, Louis, expedition, 26, 264 

Jones, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Jones, , of Memphis, 503 

Jonesborough, Tenn., capital, 272; 
Miles at, 324; early Catholics, 491 

Joy, William and Honora (Nolan), 
491, 494 

Joyce, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Joyce, Peter, 493 

Juncker, Rt. Rev. Henry D., con. 
secration, 465 n., 528; at consecra- 


tions, 545, 550 














Kearney, Rev. L. F., O. P., 226 

Kearney, Sister Mary Vincent, 451 

Kedian, Thomas, 497 

Keegan, William 
(Oaks), 494 

Keenan, Patrick, 498 

Keeney, John, 496 

Kelly, , at St. Thomas’, 154 


and Margaret 





594 INDEX 


Kelly, Sister Baptista, 451 

Kelly, Judge Charles C., alumnus 
of St. Thomas, 71540158 

Kelly, Hugh and wife, 488 

Kelly, Rev. Joseph A., O. P., minor 
orders, 407; provincial, 545; at 
Miles’ funeral, 557 

Kelly, Myles, 498 n. 

Kem, Michael and Jane (Boler), 
493 

Kenna, Mrs. Henrietta, 336 n. 

Kenna, Patrick R., 336, 502, 504 

Kennedy, Allen, 496 

Kennedy, James and wife, 503, 504, 
505 

Kennedy, Sister Jane Frances, 451 

Kennedy, Margaret, 493 

Kenrick, Most Rev. Francis P., and 
consecration of Miles, 256, letters 
from, 240n., 305, 309, 460; and 
Miles, 250 n., 389, 414; at Balti- 
more council, 352n.; and Louis- 
ville coadjutor, 431, 432; letter 
to, 463-464 

Kenrick, Most Rev. Peter R., 433; 
sermon, 432; at provincial coun- 
cil, 465; consecrations by, 545, 
549; and Schacht affair, 539, 540 

Kent Co., Md., Miles family in, 7, 9 

Kentucky, early immigration, 26, 27, 
56; Spaniards and English in, 
27n.; early Catholics, 29, 31-40, 
61-65; growth, 36n.; early life in, 
42-44, 123, 125-128; education in, 


48; early missionaries, 52-56; 
Trappists in, 70, 73n.; Domini- 
cans, 78, 79-90, 132n., see also 
names of individuals; work of 


Sisters in, 238, 239 
Kerby, Denis, 504 
Kernahan, Eliza, 489 
Kiely, Mrs. Michael, 503 
Kiley, Patrick and Ellen, 497 
King, , of Nashville, 391 
Kinney, Charles, 481 
Kinney, George, and wife, 486 





Kinney, Mary, 481 

Kinney, Patrick, 480 

Knapp, Dr., New Orleans, 487 

Knott, James, 45 

Knowles, Joseph B., 509 

Know-nothingism, in Tenn., 523-524 

Knoxville, capital of Tenn., 273; 
state of Church in, 456, 462; 
church erected, 472-473; early 
Catholics, 491-495; Know-noth- 
ingism in, 524; school, 517 

Koehneke, John, organ builder, 417 

Koen, Alberta, 290 n. 

Kruggs, , at Sts Thomas 6134 

Kuhns family, Nashville, 481 





Lamy, Most Rev. John B., conse- 
cration, 443 

Lancaster, Rev. James M., at St. 
Thomas’, 154, 158 n.; accompanies 
Sisters, 377-378; proposed as bish- 
op, 440 


Lancaster, Ralph, 49 

Langan, M., of Memphis, 336; 502, 
504 

Langan, Thomas, 487 

Larkin, Rev. John K., 277 n. 295 n., 
478 n., 495 n. 

Larkin, Rev. John, S. J., mission by, 
366 

Larkin, Mary, 503 

Larkin, Michael and Margaret (Ry- 
an), 494 

Larkin family, 488 

La Salle, Robert de, 26, 265 

Lawrence, Sarah, 480 

Leahman, Andrew, 487 

Leahman, Anthony, 487 

Leary, Mary, 493 

Lee family, at Bolivar, 500 

Lefevre, Rt. Rev. Peter, 537 

Lenoir, A. S., 496 

Leonard, Mrs. Columba, 304 

Leonard, Michael and Mary (Mur- 
phy), 502 

Leopoldine Association, purpose of 


INDEX 595 


and, aid from, 357;.575 
Lexington, Ky., congregation, 142 
Lilly, John, 45 
Lilly, Rev. Michael D., O. P., 106 n. 
Lilly, Thomas, 45 
Panahan, weve William; -K., .O.P. 

116 n. 

Little Rock, diocese established, 388 
Livers, Robert, 49 

Lonergan, Kennedy, 481 

Loras, Rt. Rev. Mathias, at councils, 

352 n., 389, 412, 465; at consecra- 

tion, 434 
Loretto, Sisters of, in Ky., 57, 238, 

239 n.; see also Mt. Carmel Acad- 

emy 
Loretto Academy, 158n. 

Lorigan, Rev. James T., cited, 295, 

459 
Lottery, for Nashville church, 308 
Louis Philippe, visit to Nashville, 

282 
Louisville, dedication of Cathedral, 

457-458 





Love, Watvotcnoinas » 154 

Lowe, William, 481 

Lowe, William and _ Bridget 
(Coyle), 481 

Lynch, F., 480 


Prnchaney.))obn«ts,.0; P., Jabors, 
106n., 530; at dedication, 533; 
pastor at Memphis, 548, 553; 
diocesan counsellor, 549; Miles’ 
funeral, 557; sketch of, 566-567 

Lyons, Catherine, 493 

Lyons, Daniel, 492, 495 

Lyons, Daniel and Catherine (Rice), 
494 

Lyons, Mary, 493 

Lyons, Nicholas, 493 

Lucas, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Lucket, Hezekiah, 45 





McAleer, Rev. Michael, goes to 
Nashville, 349, 359; labors, 364- 
365, 380, 390, 394, 400, 409, 410, 


420 n., 504-506; at Memphis, 374; 
transfer to N. Y., 411; at coun- 
cils, 412, 417; sketch, 412n.; 
Church erected by, 418, 504-505 

McAlister, see Connor and McAlis- 
ter 

McAulay, Andrew, 484, 485 n. 

McAulay, Anne, 484, 485 n. 

McAulay, Daniel, 484, 485 

McCaffrey, Rev. John, letter to, 350 

McCarthy, Jane, 481 

McCarthy, Mary, 504 

McClellan, Mrs., 406 

McCloskey, Cardinal John, proposed 
for coadjutor, 389 

McConico, Rev. Garner, 302n. 

McCormack, Sister Catherine, 446, 
447 n. 

McCormack, Edward, 491 

McCormack, Patrick, 491 

McCulla, James and Margaret (Mc- 





Neely), 490 

McDermott, James, 481 

McElroy, fp-F euihey mye Mare vaer ko 
154 


McElroy, Father John, S.J., 348 

McEvoy, Joseph, organist, 391 

McEwen, Tenn., church built, 530 

McGill, Rt. Rev. John, consecration, 
442 

McGill, Joseph H., 482 

McGovern, Eleanor, 481 


McGovern, Elizabeth (McGran), 
480 

McGovern, John, 480 

McGovern, Rev. John B., O.P., 
106 n. 

McGovern, Thomas and Jane, 497 


McGrady, Brother Hyacinth, O. P., 
IZAN: 

McGrath, Daniel, 481 

McGrath, James and Mary (Har- 
rison), 481 

McGrath, John, 493 

McGuire, Terrence, 488 

MacHale, Most Rev. John, 439 


596 


McHenry, John, 480 

MclInroe family, 488 

Mackay, Jat St whomas’, 154 

McKenna, Father Charles H., O. P. 
cited, 116 n. 

McKenna, Brother Patrick, O. P., 
237 n. 

McKeon, Patrick, 336, 489, 502, 503, 
504 

McKeon, Mrs. Patrick or William, 
446 : 

McKeon, Thomas, 504 

McKeon, William and Margaret 
(Brady), 488, 503 

McKieran, Peter 
(Wambell), 493 

McLaughlin, Ann and Thomas, 480 

McLaughlin, Eleanor, 481 

McLaughlin, James, 481 

McLaughlin, Patrick, 488 

McMahon, John, 504 

McMahon, John and _ Catherine 
(Finukin), 498 n. 

McMahon, “Squire,” 502 

McMahon, Thomas and Catherine 
(Burden), 486 

McManus, Francis and Mary, 486 

McManus, Mary A., 507n. 

McManus, Patrick, 486 

McManus, Thomas, 486, 488 

McNally, Patrick, 490 

McNamara, Michael, 504 

McNamee, James and Mary (War; 
fel), 503 

McQuaid, Frank, 487 

McQuaid, Mrs. Thomas F., 488 n. 

McShane, Father Francis D., O. P., 
baptism, 394 n. 

McSherry, Father William, 83n. 

Magevney, Eugene, school, 335n., 
336; instructions by, 400; mar- 
riage, 502; mass in home of, 503; 
of building committee, 504 

Magevney, John, 501 

Magevney, Mary, 503 

Magevney, Michael, 501 





and Amanda 





INDEX 


Magevney Philip, 501 

Maguire, Rev. John, ordained, 350, 
351 n.; labors, 360, 361, 364, 367- 
370, 373, 374, 376, 380, 384, 390- 
391, 392, 496; at ordinations, 372; 
cited, 386; sermons, 397, 402, 403; 
examinations by, 405, 415, 416; 
transfer, 415, 416; sketch, 416-417 

Male Academy, Memphis, 335 

Malone, Walter, cited, 264n. 

Manea, Jane, 479 

Manning, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Manning, John D. and Elizabeth 
(Moran), 493 

Marcell, Henry C., 482 n. 

Marcell, Mrs. Sarah (Murphy), 482 

Maréchal, Archbishop, 142 n. 

Marion Co., Ky., created, 63 n. 

Marquette, Father, voyage, 26, 265 

Marron, Father Francis T., 492 n., 
495 

Marschall, Father James A., O.P., 
labors, 548; sketch, 569-570 

Marten, Thomas and Henrietta, 486 

Martin, Matthew, 312n., 332-333, 
364, 489; letter of Miles to, 326 

Martin, Michael B. and Margaret 
(Murphy), 503 

Martin, Father 
1274251 

Mary, Queen, persecution under, 2 

Maryland, religious liberty, 1-5; 
action of Protestants in, 5; Catho- 
olic immigrants, 7, 16, 17; perse. 
cution of Catholics in, 14, 15; 
Jesuit missionaries in, 15; mar- 
riage law in, 20n.; emigration 
to Ky., 27, 29; Dominican house 
proposed for, 75 

Massachusetts, colonists in Md., 5 

Massip, Father Julius, of Ala., 
309 n.-310 n. 

Mauilla, (Mavilla), battle, 264 

Maurelian, Brother, cited, 264 n. 

Maxey, David W., at St. Thomas’, 
154, 155 





Thomas, s7O3P8 


INDEX 597 


May, Catherine (Malloy), 481 

May, Thomas, 480-481 

Mazzuchelli, Rev., Samuel C., O. P., 
foreign aid to, 354n.; at Balti- 
more council, 389 

Meagher, Rev. Denis J., O. P., 106n. 

Meagher, Patrick, 502 

Meechin family, at Jackson, 501 

Membré, Father Zenobius, O.S. F., 
with La Salle, 265 

Memphis, Tenn., Father Stokes at, 
334-336; erection of church, 371, 
504-507; school, 400, 517; church 
dedicated, 418; early Catholics, 
501-505; state of Church in, 534 

Mercier, Rev. Lucian C., aid ac- 
knowledged, xiv 

Mercy, Sisters of, 448-453 





Messenger, Rev Joseph, deed to, 
Zine, oo 
Micken, , at St. Thomas’, 154 


Miége, Bishop John B., 465, 541; 
consecration, 445; at consecration, 
545 

Miles, Ann (Mrs. Daniel Smith), 
49 

Miles, Ann Blackloc, at investiture 
ceremony, 86 

Miles Catherine, daughter of Fran- 
cis, 8 

Miles Catherine, wife of Francis, 
8 

Miles, Charity (Mrs. Ralph Lan- 
caster), 49 

Miles, Edward, in Revolution, 16 

Miles, Edward, son of Harry, 34n. 

Miles, Edward, son of John, 10 

Miles, Edward, son of Nicholas, 48 

Miles, Edward Blackloc, brother of 
the bishop, 21 n., 50, 460n. 

Miles, Francis, of St. Mary’s Co., 
8, 11 

Miles, Francis, son of John, 11 

Miles, Frederick, 16 

Niles BrowG. is, Ji 35.0: 

Miles, Henry, in Revolution, 16 


Miles, Henry, of Somerset Co., 9, 
137816 

Miles, Henry, son of John, 10 

Miles, Henry, son of Joseph, 16 

Miles, Henry, son of Philip, 31-32 

Miles, Jacob, 16 

Miles, James, 16 

Miles, James, son of Francis, 8 

Miles, James, son of John, 10 

Miles, John, 12, 16 

Miles, Corp. John, 17 

Miles, John, of Dorchester Co., 8 

Miles, John, of St. Mary’s Co., 10 

Miles, John, son of Francis, 8 

Miles, John, son of John, 10, 11 

Miles, John, son of Nicholas, 8 

Miles, Joshua, 16, 17 

Miles, Margery, wife of John, 12 

Miles, Mary, daughter of John, 11, 
12 

Miles, Mary (Mrs. Robert Livers), 
49 

Miles, Matilda (Mrs. Clement Ha- 
gan), 49 

Miles, Murphey, (Murphy), soldier 
in Revolution, 13, 16 





Miles, Nicholas, a Revolutionary 
soldier, 16 

Miles, Nicholas, early settler in 
Md., 8 


Miles, Nicholas, father of the bis- 
hop, 19-22; in Ky., 34, 37-50; will, 
48n.; mass in home of, 58; at 
investiture ceremony, 86;  fi- 
nances, 112n. 

Miles, Mrs. Nicholas (Ann Black- 
loc), 19-20 

Miles, Lieut. Nicholas, of Charles 
Cossl7 18 

Miles, Nicholas, son of John, 10 

Miles, Peter, son of Nicholas, 8 

Miles, Philip, arrival in Ky., 31, 34, 
38, 40 

Miles, Priscilla, daughter of Fran- 
cis, 8 

Miles, Rebecca, wife of, Edward, 50 


598 


Miles, Richard, Revolutionary sol- 
dier, 16 

Miles, Rt. Rev. Richard P., descent, 
7, 11, 20n., 22; early youth, 44, 
50; early studies, 71-74 at St. 
Rose’s, 80, 83-90; as novice, stu- 
dent and professor, 91-120; for- 
mula of profession, 97-98; musi- 
cian, 103, 109, 131 n., 337; manual 
toil, 105-106: records,» 1ilin. 
132 n.; ordination, 137-140; at St. 
Thomas’ College, 141-145; early 
priesthood, 159-162; at consecra- 
tions, 240-241, 432, 433, 442, 462, 
528, 549; and Dominican Sisters, 
243, 445-447; prior of St. Joseph’s, 
244; provincial, 246-254; appoint- 
ment as bishop, 250-254, 314; con- 
secration, 254-262; takes posses- 
sion of his see, 315-340; ordina- 
tions by, 315, 348, 349, 358, 371- 
372, 390, 406-407, 543; illness, 328- 
331, 356, 443, 445, 525, 526, 545; 
character, 341, 554, 558-559; jour- 
ney abroad, 343-347, 352-358; pas- 
toral letter 344-347; visits St. 
Rose‘s, 348-349, 401, 406, 421, 528- 
529; and coadjutor, 385, 536-538, 
544, 545, 546-547; at provincial 
councils, 349, 351-352, 385, 386, 388- 
390, 410-412, 434, 440-442, 465, 536, 
541; lectures, 373; letters, 403, 
404, 406, 408, 460; at dedications, 
407, 455, 457-458, 465, 473, 531-533, 
551-552; and Propagation of the 
Faith, 408-409, 413; sermons, 414, 
418, 464; relations with his 
priests, 419; visitation of Ky. 
parishes, 421; report of diocese 
(1847), 422-423; and bishopric of 
Monterey, 440; difficulty with 
Father Schacht, 447-451, 538-540; 
at first plenary council, 454-455; 
buys Nashville property, 508-509, 
510; establishes teaching order, 
514; libraries established, 517-518; 


INDEX 


and religious societies, 519-520; 
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 
520; death and burial, 554-559 

Miles, Robert, 7 

Miles, Robert, Annapolis, 17-18 

Miles, Susanna, will of, 11 

Miles, Thomas, early Md. settler, 9 

Miles, Thomas, Revolutionary sol- 
dier, 16 

Miles, Thomas, son of Nicholas, 49 

Miles, Rev. Thomas, S.J., 34n., 
ae hae 

Miles, Thomas Blackloc, nephew of 
the bishop, 20 n. 

Miles, Tobias, of Anne Arundel 
Co., 9 

Miles, Tobias, of Calvert Co., 9, 13 

Miles, Tobias Jr., 9 

Miles, Walter Revolutionary sol- 
dier, 16 

Miles, Corp. Walter, 17 

Miles, William, of Kent Co., 9 

Miles, William, Revolutionary sol- 
dier, 16 

Miles family, genealogy, 7-14, 17-22 

Miles River, 10 

Miller, M. and Mary (Snyder), 503 

Milwaukee, diocese established, 388 

Miro, Gen. Stephen, 273 

Mitchell, , 45 

Molloy, Ellen, 490 

Molloy, John C., and Anna C., 490 

Monahan, Patrick, 481 

Montbrun, see De Montbrun 

Montgomery, , at St. Thomas’, 
154 

Montgomery, Austin, 45 

Montgomery, Rev. Charles P., O.P., 
labors, 238n.; and choice of pro- 
vincial, 246; letter to, 357; bishop- 
ric declined, 440 

Montgomery, Mrs. 
111 n. 

Montgomery, Louis, records 111 n, 

Montgomery, Rev. Samuel L., O. P., 
cited, 70n.; postulant, 85; reli- 








Charles W., 


INDEX 599 


gious name, 89n.; religious pro- 
fession, 94n., 95; labors, 132n., 
395, 438, 458; ordination, 137-140; 
at St. Thomas’ College, 141, 142; 
and choice of provincial, 246; 
steward, 419; vicar general, 471; 
at Nashville seminary, 511; at 
dedication, 533; diocesan counsel- 
lor, 549; at Miles’ funeral, 555; 
sketch, 561 

Montgomery, Rev. Stephen H., 
O.P., postulant, 85; religious 
name, 89n.; religious profession, 
an. Joeerecords,, 111 ns" 132'n.; 
Brdinationyyyio/-140;" at? St 
Thomas’ College, 141, 143; at con- 
secration of Miles, 257 

Mooney, early families in Ky., 27 

Moore, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Moore family, at Bolivar, 500 

Moran, Peter and Bridget, 497 

Morgan, Edward and Anna, 493 

Morgan, Patrick and Mary, 489 

Morgan, Patrick and Mary (Mc- 
Barrens), 493 

Morgan, Rev. William O. C., goes 
to Nashville, 349; labors, 360-361 ; 
illness, 364; death, 365; superior 
of Nashville seminary, 510 

Morgan family, 486 

Morison, D., architect, 505 

Morrison, Andrew, 480 

Moscoso, Louis de, 264 n. 

Mt. Carmel Convent, Sisters of, 305 

Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., Miles at, 320 

Mt. St. Mary’s College, Md., 61n.; 
visit of Miles, 349, 350, 351; priest 
in Nashville, 361, 394n., 412 n. 

Mulholland, Michael and Theresa 
(Jenkins), 493 








Mulloy, , 479 
Mufios, Father Raphael, O.P., 
110n., 453 


Murfreesborough, Tenn., Miles at, 
319; early Catholics, 489; Know- 
nothingism in, 524 


mis- 


A88 ; 


Murphy, Father Augustine, 
sionary labors, 466, 471, 
death, 526-527 

Murphy, Dr. George, 507 

Murphy, Laurence, 489 

Murphy, Michael and Catherine 
(McDonald), 494 

Murphy, Thomas, 482 

Murphy, Rev. William, S.J., ser- 
mon, 401 

Murray, W. and Jane, 481 

Myers, John and Margaret, 497 


Nashville, erection of diocese, 249- 
250, 313; trading post, 268; made 
capitol of Tenn., 273, 396; early 
Catholics, 290, 478-484; seminary, 
339; new cathedral, 396-397; 
schools, 400; report of diocese 
(1847), 422-423; diocese annexed 
to St. Louis, 441; dedication of 
cathedral, 423-427; circulating 
library, 518-519; Know-nothing. 
ism, 523; coadjutor proposed, 536- 
538; German church, 551 

Nazareth, Sisters of, Academy, 
158n., 405; in Nashville, 525 

Neale, James, 487 

Nealis; Father’ John *T.,’:QwP., in 

Memphis, 548; sketch, 570-571 

Negroes, at St. Rose’s, 124 

Nelligan, Patrick and_ Bridget 
(O’Donnell), 498 

Nelson, Gov. Thomas, 36 

Nelson, Co., Ky., Catholic com- 
munities, 35; Miles family in, 40, 
58 

Nem, Michael and Mary (Wall), 
494 

Nerinckx, Rev. Charles, 49, 132 n.: 
labors, 70, 287, 289, 290; at con- 
secration, 162 

Neville, , 479 

Newman, Jacob, 472, 473 n. 

Newman, Cardinal John H., resolu- 
tions to, 458 








600 INDEX 


New Mexico, vicariate established, 
344 n. 

New Orleans, right of deposit, 272- 
273; made archbishopric, 434 n. 
New York, arbishopric created, 

434 n. 
Nicolas, Sister Vincent, 447 n., 468n. 
Nichols, John and Bridget (Keilly), 
494 
Noon, Rev. Dominic H., O. P., 106 n. 
North Carolina, emigration to Ky,, 
27; emigration to Tenn., 271, 274 
Nugent, James and Annora (Hooli- 
gan), 503 


Obermeyer, Rev. Leonard, visit of 
Miles to, 552 

O’Brien, James and Mary (Quinn), 
503 

O’Brien, Father Matthew A., O. P., 
and Jefferson Davis, 148; ordina- 
tion, 315, 327; provincial, 445; 
church erected, 465; prior of St. 
Rose’s, 528 

O’Carroll, Father William D., O. P., 
447 n. 

O’Connor, James and Margaret, 497 

O’Connor, Rev. Dr. Michael, at con- 
secration, 393 

O’Daniel, Joseph, father and son, 
39 n. 

O’Dowde, Rev. John, minor orders 
and Ordination mos lo/Z lls 
labors, 376, 387; transfer of, 393- 
394, 411; education, 394 n. 

O’Finan, Rt. Rev. Joseph, O P., 
books from, 401, 519 n, 

O’Flaherty, Mrs. 486 

O’Flaherty family, 486 

O’Gorman, Rt. Rev. James M., 
consecration of, 545 

Ohio, Dominicans in, 132 n. 

O’Keefe, John and Anna (McGin- 
ley), 494 

Olivieri, Most Rev. Benedict, O. P., 
appointment by, 245 


Olwell, Philip, 483 

O’Neal, John and Henrietta, 486 

O’Neil, Andrew and Caroline (Dil- 
dy), 481 

O’Neil, Jeremiah, 488 

O’Neill, Fathers Jeremiah, 495 n. 

O’Neill, Father Patrick, 495 n. 

O’Regan, Rt. Rev. Anthony, conse- 
cration, 462; at provincial coun- 
cil, 465 

Oregon, vicariate apostolic, 388 

Orengo, Rev. Aloysius, O.P., la~ 
bors, 428, 438, 459, 466, 467-468, 
476, 487; church erected, 530; 
cited, 539n.; sketch, 561-563 

Ormsby, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Ormsby, Hon. Stephen, and son, 155 

Osbourn, William, alumnus of St. 
Thomas’, 157 

O’Sullivan, Andrew and Margaret, 
486 

Overton, Judge John, 501 

Owen, Matthew and Margaret 
(Martin), 489 





Palmer, Dr. Robert C., alumnus of 
St. Thomas’, 156-157 

Park, John, 447n., 508 

Park, William, 508 

Parke, Rev. H. F., 462-463 

Payne, John, 45 

Pedele, John and Mary (Tilden), 
493 

Pelamourgues, Rev. Anthony, de- 
clines bishopric, 549 

Pennsylvania, toleration, 23 

Perry Co., Ohio, Dominican pro- 
perty in, 124n. 

Pestre, Julien De, at St. Thomas’, 
154 

Philadelphia} Augustinians, 83n.; 
aid given Nashville diocese, 390 n. 

Phillips William and Martha 
(Cochran), 493 

Phillips, William D., 484n. 

Phillips, Mrs. William D. (Eliza- 


INDEX 601 


beth Dwyer), 479-480, 483 

Phobus, Sophia, 502 

Pietro, Cardinal Michael di, 78 n. 

Pigeon Hills, Pa., 61, 70, 73 n. 

Pitt, Archibald, 45 

Pitts, Fountain E., Methodist minis- 
ter, 280 

Pittsburgh, diocese established, 388 

Pius V, Dominican Pope, 89 

Bis eV ie 177 

Pausey L677 7 

Pius IX, arid religious vows, 96 

Plunkett, J. D., 482 

Plunkett, James and wife, 488 

Plunkett, see also Underhill 

Poe, Isaac and Mary (Daily), 489 

Polin, Math ote Lhomas #154 

Polin, Rev. Thomas J:,-O. P., 127 n., 
156, 246 

Pollock, Agnes, 489 

Pollock, Dr. S., 489 

Pope, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Pope, Hon. John and sons, 155 

Poplar Neck Settlement, 35, 47, 63 

Portier, Rt. Rev. Michael, missions, 
310 n., 520; with Miles abroad, 
352; at dedication of Nashville 
cathedral, 425 

Posen, letter to archbishop of, 352 

Pottinger’s Creek Settlement, 33-35, 
S03 

Power, Michael and Bridget (Hand- 
lon), 503 

Powers, Bridget, 504 

Pozzo, Rev. Eugene H., O.P., la- 
bors, 380; at Baltimore council, 














388 
Prather, NateotuLonomas.s154 
Priber, Christian, Indian agent in 
Tenn., 268 
Priestly, , early settler of 


Nashville, 290 
Prince, Balina, 502 
Prince, William 

(Phiphs), 502 
Prince George Co., Md., Miles fam- 


and Pauline 


ily, 13; emigration to Ky., 29-35 
Propagation of the Faith, French 
Society, aid given Miles, 331, 354, 
408-409, 413, 460, 575 
Pulaski, Tenny, Know-nothingism 
in, 524 
Purcell, Archbishop John B., and 
Miles, 248, 251-252, 254, 255, 348, 
406, 407, 460, 469, 535; letters to, 
329, 408, 415; letters of, 330, 537; 
at Baltimore council, 352n.; and 
foreign aid, 354n.; and annuity, 
357, 358n.; at consecration, 393, 
442; visits Nashville, 425-426 
Pyburn, Eliza, 488 n. 
Pyburn, Michael, 487 
Quebec, vicariate apostolic, and 
bishopric, 266 
Quebec Act, 23-24, 24n., 269 
Quincy, IIl., diocese, 465 n. 
Quinlan, Rt. Rev. John, consecra- 
tion, 553 
Quinlon, James 
(Shaunpy), 481 
Quinn, Rev. William, O.P., 116n. 


and Margaret 


Ranken, Rev. John D., O.P., visit 
of Miles to, 353 

Rapp, Basil and Catherine (Spaeh), 
502 

Rappe, Rt. Rev. Amadeus, conse- 
cration, 442 

Ratterman, Bernard, 480 

Ratterman, Frederic, 480 

Ratterman, John G., 480 

Raymaecker, Father John V. de, 
O.P., visit of Miles to, 352-353 

Read, Edward and Drusilla (Cher- 
tv8 1503 

Read, Martha Lytle, 280 

Reagan, Ann, 504 

Recollects, with La Salle, 265 

Redmond, Mrs. C., 485 

Redmond, Frances, 485 

Redmond, Harriet, 485 


602 INDEX 


Redmond, Henry, 485 

Reid, James, 18 

Reilly, James, 492 

Rese, Rt. Rev. Frederic, in Europe, 
S521. 

Reynolds, Rt. Rev. Ignatius A., 457, 
463; proposed for bishop, 240, 
388-389; consecration, 393 

Ricardi, John B., 492 

Ricardi, Peter, 492 

Richardson, John and Melvina, 497 

Richardson, Margaret, 492 n. 

Robertson Co., Tenn., Church at, 
374, 375 

Rochford, Rev. 
106 n. 

Rogan, Bernard, 280, 484 

Rogan, Charles, 484 


Johny tAt, WO sn, 


Rogan, Clarissa, (Mrs. Joseph 
Desha), 484 
Rogan, Francis, 279, 280, 395, 484 


Rogan, Hugh, story of, 278-280, 
281n.; and Nancy (Duffy), 484; 

Rogan, John, 484 

Rogan, William, 484 

Rogers, Daniel, 45 

Rohan, Rev. William, missionary 
labors, 53, 54n., 275 

Rolling Fork Settlement, 
5/2100 

Rosati, Bishop Joseph, and conse- 
cration of Miles, 254, 256, 257, 
258; at Baltimore council, 343, 
352n.; with Miles abroad, 352 

Ross, John, 496 

Ross, Sister Xavier, and division of 
Sisters, 449, 450, 451; and Schacht 
affair, 541; cited, 541 

Ross’ Landing, Miles at, 319; early 
Catholics, 496; see also Chatta- 
nooga 

Rossville, Tenn., Miles at, 319 

Rowan, , at St.’ Thomas’, 154 

Rowan, Hon. John, Jr., 155 

Rudd, Christopher A., 156, 158n.; 
postulant, 85; religious name, 


34, 35, 





89n.; account of life, 92-93; at 
St. Rose’s, 114 

Rudd, Capt. James, alumnus of St. 
Thomas’, 156, 158 

Rudd, Richard, alumnus 
Thomas’, 156 

Ruohs, Joseph, 498 

Ryan, Edward, 486 

Ryan, Rev. Joseph T., O. P., made 
subdeacon, 401; made deacon, 406 


of (St 


St. Agnes’ Academy, Memphis, 446- 
447, 548 

St. Andrew’s, Knoxville, 289, 293 

St. Ann’s Cartwright’s Creek Set- 
tlement, 63 

St. Ann’s, N. Y., dedication, 455 

St. Anthony’s, Breckinridge Co., 
Ky., 296, 297, 299, 464 

St. Athanasius’ Seminary, 510-511 

St. Augustine’s, Philadelphia, 74n, 

St. Benedict’s, Shelby Co., Ky., 64 

St. Bernard’s, Adair Co., Ky., 64 

St. Catherine’s Convent, Spring- 
field, Ky., 106n., 243, 421, 529 

St. Charles’, Washington Co., Ky., 
63 

St. Christopher’s, Madison Co., Ky., 
64 

St. Clare’s, Hardin Go, Kysnge 

St. Dominic’s, Springfield, Ky., 65 n. 

St. Francis’ Settlement, 35, 37, 63, 
142 

St. John’s, Bullitt Co., Ky., 65 

St. John’s Hospital and Orphan 
Asylum, 430, 432 

St. John the Evangelist’s, Edgefield, 
dedication, 531-532 

St. Joseph, Brothers of, for Nash- 
ville, 512-513 

St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Bardstown, 
161, 442 

St. Joseph’s, Somerset, Ohio, erec- 
tion of, 243; crucifix, 399 n. 

St. Joseph’s College, Somerset, 247, 
464 


INDEX 603 


St. Joseph’s Province, founded, 103; 
early days, 121; subsidy to Cin- 
cinnati archbishopric, 357, 358 n. 

Saint Louis, Ky., 64 

St. Louis, Mo., archbishopric, 441; 
provincial councils, 465, 541 

St. Louis University, 403 

St. Magdalen’s, see St. Catherine’s 

Saint Mary’s, Columbus, Ohio, 
Sisters of, 106n. 

St. Mary’s, Hagerstown, Md., letter 
from pastor, 29 

St. Mary’s, Jackson, 459 


St. Mary’s Academy, Nashville, 
work of, 405, 414-415, 447-452, 515 
St. Mary’s Academy, Somerset, 


commencement, 464 

St. Mary’s College, Ky., 366, 382, 
401; transfer, 310, 416 

St. Mary’s Co., Md., Miles family 
fe7 io, Opi i213 emigration 
to Ky., 29-35 

St. Mary’s Seminary, 
74 n. 

St. Michael’s, Nelson Co., Ky., 47, 
63 

St. Michael’s, Robertson Co., Tenn., 
375; early Catholics, 485-486; 
academy established, 516; library, 
518 

St. Palais, Rt. Rev: Maurice De, 
consecration, 432, 442 

St. Patrick, Brothers of, establish- 
ment, 514 

St. Patrick’s, Danville, Ky., dedica- 
tion, 107 n. 

St. Patrick’s, Junction City, Miles 
at, 358 

St. Patrick’s, Maysville, 394 

St. Patrick’s, McEwen, 520, 521 

St. Patrick’s, Mercer Co., Ky., 64 

St. Patrick’s, near Waverly, dedi- 
cated, 402 

St. Paul, diocese erected, 434 n. 

St. Peter’s, Lexingotn, Ky., 64 

St. Peter’s, Memphis, erected, 390, 


Baltimore, 


504-507; dedication, 418; placed 
under Dominicans, 420 

St. Pierre, Father Paul de, 53 n. 

Sti Pius’,- Ky. Mission: 37 

St. Rose’s Church and Priory, 
Springfield, Ky., established, 65 n., 
73, 79-80; construction, 103-107; 
ceremony of profession, 95; deco- 
rations, 102; dedication, 107, 465; 
ordinations, 108-109, 138; early 
days, 122-136; spiritual life, 129- 
132; Miles visits, 348-349, 358, 388, 
401, 406, 421, 528-529 

Sts. Peter and Paul’s, Chattanooga, 
erected, 531; dedication, 533-534 

St. Stephen’s Ky., 57, 62-63 

St. Thomas’ College, 92n., 103n.; 
construction of, 103-107; history, 
111-120; students and priests, 141- 
158 

St.. Thomas’, Nelson Co., Ky.,. 63, 
139 n. 

St. Vincent’s Home, 452 

Salem, Tenn., Miles at, 319 

Salmon, Rev. Anthony, labors, 57- 
59; death of 59-71) 285 

Sanders, vatiot, <Laomas’, 154- 

Sanders, Charles, 484 n. 

Sanders, Mrs. Charles 398n., 482 

Sandrigan, William and Margaret, 
497 

Santa Barbara, Calif., Franciscan 
monastery, 73 

Savannah, bishopric, 434 n. 

Savelli, Rev. Nicholas, labors, 360, 
380; at ordinations, 372 

Schacht, Rev. Ivo, tonsure received, 
371; ordination, 390, 511; labors, 
394, 395-396, 399, 428-429, 433, 458, 
459, 460, 471, 482, 530, 532-533; 
church dedicated, 402; difficulty 
with Miles, 447-450, 538-540; aid 
secured by, 460; visit abroad, 467; 
cited, 526; and coadjutor, 537; 
sketch, 542 n. 

Schaeffer, Rev. Peter, 132n., 139 n. 





604 INDEX 


Scheller, Francis, 502 

Schmitt, Louis, 486 

Schmitt, Michael and Anna (Corts), 
486 

Schrend, Charles J. 
(Boyer), 494 

Scioto Colony, 55 

Scollard, Rev. John, labors of, 529, 
530n.; diocesan counsellor, 549; 
at Miles’ funeral, 557; sketch, 
565-566 

Scotland, immigrants from, 7 

Scott, Lucy H., 486 

Scott Co., Ky., Catholic settlement. 
55, 63n.; missionaries, 58; Fran- 
ciscans proposed for, 61 

Sedgwick, George, 492 

Serena, Sister, 405 

Seven Dolors Cathedral, Nashville, 
295; dedication, 423-425, 426 

Sevier, John, governor of Franklin, 
272; governor of Tenn., 273; reli- 
gion of, 277; Tenn. lands, 284 

Shaller, Catherine, 503 

Shawnees, in Tenn., 267 

Shea, Denis and Mary, 498 

Shea, John and Honora (Davis), 
494 

Shea, Martin and Bridget (Fogar- 


and Susan 


ty), 493 

Sheahan, Patrick and Catherine, 
497 

Sheahan, Thomas and Mary (Con- 
nell), 494 


Sheehan, Jeremiah, 488 

Sheehy, James, 487 

Shelbyville, Tenn., Father Stokes 
Ab ooiee churen, 064 

Shepherd, Brother Patrick, O.P., 
237 n. 

Shinnick, Jeremiah, 481 

Short, Father William B., O.P., 
invited to U. S., 66 

Sibel, Henry, 18 

Semms, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Simpson, Sister Ann, 446 





Simpson, James, 45 
Simpson, Walter, 45 








Skidmore, svat St. Thontas; 
154 

Slavin, , 480 

Slattery, Terrence and Elizabeth, 


497 
Slevin, Mr., Cincinnati, 535, 536 


Slinger, Rev. Joseph H., O.P, 
106 n. 
Smith, B., 309 


Smith, Benedict, 45 

Smith, Daniel, 49 

Smyth, Rt. Rev. Clement T., conse- 
cration, 528; at consecrations, 545 

Smyth, Mary, 502 

Smyth, Thomas, 489 

Snyder, Joseph C. and Mary, 504 

Somaglia, Julius M. Cardinal de, 
letter to, 305 

Somerset Co., Md., Miles family 
inn BO.atS 

Sorin, Father Edward, C.SS.C., 
and Nashville academy, 512-514 

Spalding, Benedict, 32 n. 

Spalding, Rev. B. J., 557 

Spalding, Mother Catherine, 
division of Sisters, 449 

Spalding, Ignatius, 158 n. 

Spalding, James, 45 

Spalding, John, 20n. 

Spalding, Bishop Martin J., cited, 
30, 84, 121, 276, 300-302; at con- 
secrations, 257, 259n., 434; plea 
for Miles, 320-322; relations with 
Miles, 342-343, 349; sermons, 351, 
365n., 442; in Nashville, 363; 
proposed as coadjutor, 385-386; 
letters to, 403, 404; coadjutor of 
Louisville, 430-432; and Mufios, 
453; letter of, 525; at dedication, 
533-534; and Schacht affair, 539, 
540; visit to Miles, 553 

Spalding, Rev. Martin P., O. P., 19, 
20n., 22n., 420n. 

Speaks, James, 45 


and 


INDEX 


Springfield, Ky., church, 65, 238 n. 

Stacker and Johnson, builders, 294 

Stanfield, John, and family, 489 

Stephenson, Vernon, 396, 483 

Sterling family, at Bolivar, 500 

Stevenson, Mrs. T. J., 378 

Stewart, William, 497 

Stokes, Rev. Joseph, letters of, 329, 
350; labors, 331-340; in charge 
of diocese, 347; cited, 359-360, 
361, 363, 364, 367, 372-373, 374. 
376, 377-378, 381, 501-502; at or- 
dinations, 371-372; enters Jesuit 
order, 381-382; later career, 
382 n.-383 n. 

Stone, Gov. William, deposition, 6 

Strickland, William, architect, 426 

Sullivan, Daniel and Mary (Mar- 
tin), 494 

Sullivan, Denis and Caroline, 489 

Sullivan, Denis and Catherine, 497 

Sullvian, Denis and Helen, 493 

Sullivan, Denis and Honora, 486 

Sullivan, James and Margaret (Mc- 
Carthy), 498 

Sullivan, Patrick, 497 

Sullivan, Roger, 497 

Sullivan, Thomas and Jane (Cole- 
man), 494 

Sulpicians, 74 n. 

Sumner Co., Tenn., first Catholics, 
484-485 

Sutton, Father, labors, 305 

Swan, William C., 473 n. 

Sykes, Jeremiah and Catherine 
(McGettigan), 493 


Talbot, Co., Md., Miles family in, 
ye ola 

Tarlton, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Tarpy, Thomas, 487 

Tarrascon, Henry, 154 

Tarrascon, Louis, 154 

Taylor family, 488 

Tennessee, immigration, 26n., 271, 
524-525; Dominicans in, 132n.; 





605 


early history, 263-275; early mis- 
sionaries, 264; French in, 265. 
269; Indians, 267-269; in Diocese 
of Quebec, 269; admitted to 
Union, 273; early Catholics, 274- 
275, 284-293; first priest of, 275, 
295-306; first Catholic Church in, 
294-313; Sisters of Charity in, 
377; early missions, 488, 490-491, 
500 

Thayer, Rev. John, labors, 57-60, 
283, 285 

Thomas, , at St. Thomas’, 154 

Thomson, Valentine, 45 

Thornton, Patrick and Mary M., 
490 

Thorpe, Sister Emily, 446 

Timon, Rt. Rev. John, sermon at 
consecration of Miles, 258, 259 n. 

Tobin, Rev. Thomas V., letter of, 
281 n. 

Tool, Matiot. 2homasy) 154 

Toon, Sateot, unomas, 1o4 

Trappists, 61, 70, 73n.; novices, 86, 
95 

Traughber, Levi 
(Fisher), 485 

Troost, Dr. Gerard, 415 

Tuite, Rev. William R., O.P., 67, 
132n.; labors, 69-74, 159-160; 
accident, 70n.; master of postu- 
lants, 84, 91; scholarship, 101, 102; 
musician, 109; at St. Thomas’, 
114, 152; and wearing of tonsure, 
125; vineyard, 127-128; death, 
238 n. 

Turner, Rev. Jeremiah P., O,P., 
106 n. 

Twyman, Judge James, 285, 286 

Tyne, Mrs. Thomas J., 479 n. 











and Mary 


Udwig, Frederick and Margaret 
(Bonninger), 503 

Underhill, Father Gerard A., O. P., 
68 n. 

Underhill, Father Thomas A., O.P., 


606 


and Dominicans in U. S., 68 
Union Co., Ky., Dominican proper- 
ty in, 124n. 


Van De Velde, Rt. Rev. James O., 
consecration, 433-434 

Van den Broek, Rev. John T., O.P., 
569 

Van de Weyer, Rev. Francis A., 
O. P., visit of Miles to, 353 

Van Zeeland, Father Raymond, 
O.P., visit of Miles to, 353 

Vardeman, Rey. Jeremiah, Baptist, 
301 

Villeneuve, Sister Dorothy, 452 

Vincennes, bishopric, 249 

Virginia, colonists in Md., 5; in- 
tolerance in, 5; emigration to Ky., 
27, emigration to Tenn., 271, 274 


Visitation Convent, Georgetown, 
DAGar324 
Vogel, Rev. John A., ordination, 


543; at dedication, 551; sketch, 
568-569 





Walker, , 479 
Walkerwa Rev. Osman Ay OAre 
106 n. 


Wallace, Father, see Willett 

Waller, John, farm of, 72, 79, 112 

Walsh, Rev. William, 281 n., 372 n., 
478 n., 499, 508 n. 

Walter, , Clarksville, 486 

Warren, Andrew, 498 n. 

Warren, Charles, 45 

Wartburg, Tenn., church property, 
429; Franciscans in charge, 438 

Washington Co., Md., emigration 
to Ky., 29 

Washington Co., Ky., created, 63 n, 

Wassen, Rev., C. P., 487 n. 

Watauga Association, 271-272 

Wathen, Dr. Benjamin, alumnus of 
St. Thomas’, 157 

Wathen, Charles, 45 

Wathen, Dr. Richard, alumnus of 





INDEX 


St. Thomas’, 157 

Wathen, Winifred, 45 

Watson, Joseph, 486 

Waverly, Tenn., church near, 395, 
402 

Wayne, Gen., Anthony, 28 

Webb, Hon. B. J., lecture, 291-292 

Welch, Patrick, 493 

Werner, Julius, 481 

Wessell, George H., 481 

Wheeling, bishopric, 434n., 442 

Whelan, Father Charles, O.S.F., 
missionary labors, 52-53; leaves 
Ky., 276 

Whelan, Rt. Rev. James, coadjutor 
of Nashville, 536, 537, 544, 545, 
546-549; at consecration, 550; at 
dedication, 552; last rites given 
Miles, 554; at Miles’ funeral 556. 
557; sketch of, 571-574 

Whelan, John, 486 

Whelan, Brother 
517 n. 

Whelan, Rt. Rev. Richard V., 442 

White, Abraham, 29 

White, Catherine, 290 n. 

White, Isaac, 29 

White, Joseph A., 503 

White Sulphur, Ky., mission, 37 

Whitside, James, 498 

Willett, Rev. William T., O.P3 
postulant, 85; religious mame, 
89n.; religious profession, 94n., 
95; records, lll n., 132n.; ordina- 
tion, 137-140; at St. Thomas, 
College, 141, 142 

Williams, Capt. John, residence, 378 

Wilson, Rev. Joseph A., O. P., and 
choice of provincial, 246 

Wilson, Rev. Samuel T., O. P., and 
establishment of Dominicans, 67; 
cited, 68n.; labors, 69-74, 132n.; 
accident, 70n.; relations with 
Miles, 72, 143, 144-145; work as 
provincial, 80-91; scholarship, 
101; death, 110 n.; at St. Thomas’, 


Michael, O. P., 


INDEX 607 


113-120, 143, 147, 153, 159; elo- 
quence, 116, 117 n.; description of 
St. Rose’s, 122-136; at consecra- 
tion, 162; and tonsure, 242 

Winchester, Tenn. Miles at, 319; 
Stokes at, 331 

Wiseman, Catherine, 11 

Wiseman, John, 11, 12 

Wiseman, Robert, 11, 12 

Wood, Rt. Rev. James F., consecra- 
tion, 528; visit of Miles to, 552 





Worland, Meatioot. 14 Lomas, 
154 
Wrenn, Cornelius and Margaret 


(Cantillon), 494 


Young, Mrs. Florida, 20n. 

Young, Ignatius, record of birth, 
111 n. 

Young, Father Nicholas D., O.P., 
Viap et Lodi loom, ou t.4) cited, 


pnw e/2 wee Tne ilone a iain 
postulant, 85n.; as novice, 93; 
profession of, 95; return to Md., 
109; records, 111 n.; in Ky., 143; 
provincial, 243, 244-246; protest 
of, 252; and Purcell, 358 n.; prior, 
401 

Young, Father Nicholas R., O.P., 
missionary labors, 467, 472; ser- 
mon, 473; transfer, 527; sketch, 
530 n.; proposed as coadjutor, 536, 
537. 

Young, Brother Robert, O.P., as 
pupil, 71; postulant, 85; religious 
name, 89n.; religious profession, 
94n., 95; illness and death, 109, 
110; information concerning, 
110 n.-111 n. 

Young, Thomas, 21 


Zanesville, O., Miles at, 358 


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